As I'm sure everyone has found that the built-in search tool for vBulletin requires a pretty high-degree of finesse to get results you find meaningful. I'd like to start a discussion about how people would really like search to work on the site. With this the feedback needs to be very constructive and specific as to what it is that you think it needs. Suggestions like "it should just return the results like I want them" won't be helpful.

Let me know what you want and we'll see if its possible to build it.

Mark

 

use this instead of the feeble vBulletin tool:

http://www.sphinxsearch.com/

/thread

 

I read a bit of one or two of the articles, and I almost understand them!

From a use point of view, I'd like a hybrid of what we have now and something more googleish. While you can constrain Google to search NAM, it doesn't report the results the way I'd like, buy thread or post. The basic search function should just be trashed, and the advanced become the default. If it's poplutated propery, it can return the same as the basic search function, so it won't be a hardship for those that don't like to go advnaced.

On the advanced search page, I tried to input multiple author names, and didn't get hints how to do it. I tried both a comman and a semicolon, but name suggestion failed for the second name. Since there are a core of users that I like to read for new insights, it would be good to be able to search on multiple authors. Also, having the ability to save search templates would be good, then it's not such a hassle to use rather complex queries, as you'd only have to create them once....

Thats a good start, I think...

Matt

 

I think you have to use the word "and" between the words you want IE: torque and steer, then the search works better, but it's still weak. I don't know of an alternative for V'b 's search tho...........

 

Sphinx is a solid option as a) it's not a drain on the servers, b) it works, and c) it's internal to and pointed at the forum db, no outside google searches.

the search function can be a MAJOR drain on bandwidth (there's a reason for the 30sec wait period and it's not just to **** you off )

 

is that if you search for posts, it truncates at 500. (at least it does if I look for all my posts via my profile). That means most of my pearls of wisdom from long ago I can't find.... It's a freakin computer! So what if it makes a long list.....

Matt

 

It shouldn't be too long before vBulletin supports thread prefixes and tags which, if used wisely, should help searching.

Why would you want to wade through even 500 posts

You can always sort your results to get oldest first

Display the results showing threads and if a thread title looks promising view the thread and use "Search this Thread" to display the posts containing the search keywords.

 

Agreed - if you had the options to search by author, date range, forum, etc. like the current function, but if the "keywords" box worked like google... that would be da bomb...

 

I've been watching the development of this for an easy-to-install version for vBulletin. Its progressed a lot in the last several months but it doesn't look like its quite productized yet and integrating it is still somewhat of a bear.

Mark

 

it's working fine on another site that's much larger than this.

 

I've seen several sites that have used it. The issue is that to get it integrated into the core of vbulletin and replace the current search functionality I haven't seen anyone deliver it as a product that is easy to install. From the last time I looked at it you had to do a lot of hacking to get it integrated. I'm hoping that sometime, in the not-so-distant future someone will come up with a simple to install vB product package and step-by-step tutorial so that I don't end up breaking things more.

I will say that I switched from the standard vBulletin search to MySQL-based search indexes that allowed a move from a minimum of four characters in a search to allow searches of 3 characters. You can now search for JCW where we couldn't before. It still doesn't help for "GP" but to support that would require a VERY large increase in index space because of all the possible 2 letter combinations found in all the posts of the site.

My understanding of Sphinx is that it is very good at searching very large bodies of content. That said I haven't seen any information on exactly the bells and whistles of doing what others in this thread are requesting. I'm not saying it may not support these things but I haven't seen any information on how other sites have done the integration and what improvements (other than speed and small keyword search) it offers.

Mark

 

the issue with the current search tool is that it gives false positives. 'Team Dynamics stencil' for example, searched in the wheel and tire forum yields tons of results....none of which have all three words. If I only want to search on 'Team Dynamics', I would have. It seems the search is set for a best match...makes it tough to find specific topics which then in turn causes people to start new threads, further complicating things.

 

+1. I really want the search tool to work somehow like Google or Yahoo. Using "and", "or" and "not" really helps.

 

Thanks for recognizing the search short comings and looking into fixing it. If you want to emulate a superior search tool, eBay's is great. On top of the default "contains all words" (as opposed to any of the words), it can be modified to do the following:
-word; results do not include this word(s) in it.
(word1, word2, etc); includes each word separately searched.
*; wildcard allowing partial word searches

In addition, being able to specify one or more threads, date range and one or more users are great tools to include/keep.

 

When doing lookups that is proper SQL syntax.

not only that your making your search that more specific..

for the most part all the SQL query is doing is:

SELECT * --Sidenote--All
FROM tbl.The_Best_Forums_In_The_World
WHERE POST='I want this and this and this' --side note this is in string form
(give me everything with this keyword, and this key word and that keyword)
or something like that...

and then when you hit submit or search all it does is match the criteria.. and displays the text matching the desired text formatting. Which is run through a ,parser to parse the data results and formatted to look nice for the user...... Yes, it can become very involved

Just a little SQL lesson in case you were wondering how a search actually works... Granted all the fields where the data is stored are to be tailored to match your database setup.. and everything I just said is basic and if your a programmer you should be able to read this ..., AND understand it

The google algorithm is fairly complex and I will sleep on this and try to think of a solution that may be a possible option..