I can't search for posts using specific keywords in specific subforums by specific users. What kinda forum is this?

Tumbling Down wrote:I can't search for posts using specific keywords in specific subforums by specific users. What kinda forum is this?

A non-commercial one, with no ads, paid for out-of-pocket by some of the staff. A functional advanced search requires a prohibitively expensive service package. So unless the users are willing to pay for it, it's not going to happen.

Tumbling Down wrote:What kinda forum is this?

One running on a highly customised version of by now fairly antique software.

Personally, I find that suitably targeted Google query gets me to what I'm after.

Reichu wrote:A functional advanced search requires a prohibitively expensive service package.

No it doesn't; it's a free part of the two top free forum packages (the ones I happen to know).

HOWEVER, what it DOES needs is an insane amount of work by someone sufficiently knowledgeable about both the existing and the alternative packages to enable the forum to transition from its present form to another such package, and it's not clear how much else that's valued would be lost in such an effort. So far the problem has been severe enough to daunt those who have considered it.

Sufficiently focussed use of Google can go a long way, though.

pwhodges wrote:No it doesn't; it's a free part of the two top free forum packages (the ones I happen to know).

Huh. I wonder what I was thinking about, then? There was some reason we don't have a functional built-in search.

Being based on a very old version of the software can do that!

SMF v2.0 built-in search:

phpBB v3.1 built-in search:

Don't know anything about programming but IIRC Ornette said that there were so many additions, configurations, and general tinkering with the forum's phpbb 2.0 code that it is an unmodable Frankenstein by this point.

Exactly; and the modifications to the database schema make a standard automated conversion to a newer version of phpBB or to another system impractical as well. That's not to say that the possibility of doing it with enough time and manual intervention has been discounted completely; the question then is what worthwhile customisation we might lose by moving to a more standard, though also more capable, platform.

Reichu wrote:Huh. I wonder what I was thinking about, then? There was some reason we don't have a functional built-in search.

You were thinking about the reason why it was removed in the first place.

Dreamhost, without letting us know, went into our search tables and disabled them, because they were getting too big and slowing down the database server for our shared hosting plan. They offered to move us to dedicated hosting where we'd have our own database running on our own server but that was a *very* expensive move, at least at the time.

The side affect of what Dreamhost did to us is that all the posts that were made on the forum since the time our search function was unceremoniously disabled is that none of them are indexed, so even if we turned those tables back on, hundreds of thousands of posts wouldn't show up in the results.

@pwhodges Reichu was referring to our hosting service package, not the forum software.

At one point, we went with a forum specific search function that was also off-site/3rd party, but they've since stopped existing.

More info on all this if you search for "dreamhost forum search" probably. I know it's been brought up several times in the past in various places.

Ornette wrote:The side affect of what Dreamhost did to us is that all the posts that were made on the forum since the time our search function was unceremoniously disabled is that none of them are indexed, so even if we turned those tables back on, hundreds of thousands of posts wouldn't show up in the results.

But surely the software can simply reindex? When I turned on indexing for the QC forums (which are a similar age), it took less than 24 hours to index at a rate that had no effect on the responsiveness for users.

Tumbling Down wrote:I can't search for posts using specific keywords in specific subforums by specific users. What kinda forum is this?

One with the better part of a million posts. Just be thankful it hasn't collapsed under its own weight.

Brush up on your Google-fu.

In particular, the "site:" operator is pretty useful.

Reichu wrote:A non-commercial one, with no ads, paid for out-of-pocket by some of the staff. A functional advanced search requires a prohibitively expensive service package. So unless the users are willing to pay for it, it's not going to happen.

Well, now I feel like an asshole.