I just typed in "ftp" as a search keyword, and searched over all available forums and categories and all posts. The search only returns 6 hits? I can choose individual forums and return more hits. Something doesn't seem to be working correctly.
J
You are correct, it's not working very well, possibly not at all.
I ran a search for spamassassin and it came up with two posts by moderators, neither of which had anything to do with spamassassin.
Not to worry about this, there are far more important things to fix.
Johnie
plus can we have the highlight search text colour changed from white - you can't see it against the page background!!
I used tho think that the search feature was not working. I ran across a post on the phpBB forum that explains it pretty well. The board uses what is called "stopwords" that are part of the database. They are common words that if used when searching would eat up resources. The other thing that can affect it is when you are using multiple words. The secret here is to make sure the Search for All terms is selected and the you use "AND" to seperate your terms or other boolean espressions.
There is also a database of words that are searched that are connected with each post they are in. The search is not actually looking at each post but a list of words.
Both databases should be maintained by the admin of the page. From time to time they need to be cleaned up. It may be that the time has come for that or that WestHost has chosen to add such words as Spamassin to the stopwords.
I have also found that it helps to narrow down the search to a Forum or catagory. On some things when I try to search the whole forum it well not return anything but if I narrow it to one forum it well find something.
I agree with <-- ROB --> that I would like to see them change the highlight color to something other then white.
There are times when the search does seem to simply "bulk" even returning a server error. I think perhaps it is a bit weak and from looking at the site for phpBB it is one thing they are trying to improve upon.
Shawn,
I keeping this as your finest post.
After reading it 3 times I have decided that you have listed excellent reasons why the "search" does not "search".
In the future I will think of it as an "Almost Search". Having no futher need to wonder why it does not work now like it did a 8 months ago I can shuffle on to bigger things.
A correction to an earlier post... The Upgrade is now in day 168, but whos counting?
Johnie
Jonnie,
Hmmm.... so you saw that allso. The first paragrah for the most part is what a user on the phpBB forum stated. I read it not to long after working with the board script and went OK. Then the more I looked at how it was searching and in searching on other boards using phpBB I began to wonder if the set up really did work. I think maybe it is fine for a small board that the admin is always tweaking the stopwords and searchwords but on a board like this with heavey traffic... well.
The narrowing down to a single subject does help a bit which is why I suggested it. I guess my final suggestion on this topic would be:
If after trying the "Almost Search" you do not find the answer to your question then move on to the "Real Search" ... Post your question. :)
Hope you do not mind me borrowing the "Almost Search" I like that.
PS... I realize you thought I was defending the Search but I really was not. I was just supplying what I had found out
Hello all,
Hopefully future releases of phpBB will have a more robust search, but until then we have changed the highlight color from white to red. Hope this helps.