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SurfGuitar101 Forums » SurfGuitar101 Website »

Permalink SurfGuitar101 search Engine

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Hello Brian.

I'm not sure if this has been covered before because if i use the SG101 search engine with the word "search" it gives back more useless pages than i can cope with. I find the search page hard to use generally.

Is there an alternative or is seaching so power hungry it needs to be restrictive?

You could do a really precise Google search with the clause "site:surfguitar101.com" in it.

For example:

dick+dale+tiger site:surfguitar101.com

Why are you using the word "search", anyhow? And now that I think of it, the search feature on this site works pretty well.

SSIV

The current search page seems to give a lot of people problems, I'm not totally sure why. It does seem to work reasonably well for me. By default it displays threads that have results in them, which can be confusing. I usually change that to show posts.

LHR's advice is spot on.

In any event, SG101 2.0 (which is in the works now) is probably not going to use the same forums software, so it will be something entirely different.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Just to be clear, you are talking about the forums search feature, right?

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

My problem when I use the search feature is when I want to go back to the list of the search results I get a Web Page Expired screen and have to start the search process all over again. What am I doing wrong?

BTW - I like LHR's sugesstion and will try that.

CUTBACK

What browser Surfgitar?

You can always open the search page results in a new tab or window and keep it around for a while. Just right click on the links in it and open them in new tabs/windows.

I'm probably going to punt and just incorporate a google search as a first attempt in SG101 2.0.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Brian
I'm probably going to punt and just incorporate a google search as a first attempt in SG101 2.0.

I was faced with the same decision years back for my last employer, but ultimately decided not to reinvent the engine... the free one works fine.

Mike
http://www.youtube.com/morphballio

Brian
What browser Surfgitar?

Internet Explorer 7

CUTBACK

Yeah, IE doesn't seem to use the back button the way it was intended. Often it will actually try to load the page again instead of using the old version out of cache. Firefox does a better job in this respect.

But yeah, in any event, I think leveraging google for SG101 2.0 will give better searches with the least amount of effort on my part. We are just tying ourselves to the giant Google monster. But I already am in many other ways...and if it doesn't work out I can go another route.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Brian
Just to be clear, you are talking about the forums search feature, right?

Yes! the page which is almost like DOS with wildcards and so on.

For instance, i haven't found a way of searching header titles yet. If i want to search for other peoples 6G15 projects i just seem to get hundreds of pages where 6G15 is mentioned. I also have problems with the back button and software requests asking not to search so quickly.

I'd guess Brian quite likes "command" type interfaces. well, i have a friend in the software business and he likes that kind of thing. But for the rest of us who is used to modern GUI the SG101 search page looks and acts a little dated i guess. There's so much i want to search for but i find it fatiguing to use.

Good tip about Google. Thanks

Who said I liked the forums search feature? I didn't write the phpBB forums software that you are using now. Therefore my personal preference doesn't enter into it. Yes, I do like command line interfaces but I would never impose that on the users of this site. As I have said a few times, I am trying to get something better for SG101 2.0.

Having said all that, you actually can get reasonable results out of it if you use enough terms, narrow to specific forums or user, and display results as posts.

Indeed, searching specifically in thread titles is lacking right now.

For now, open all search results in a new tab or window, then you won't have to use the back button.

Searching is a huge problem to solve. It consumes lots of resources on the back end. It isn't an easy thing to implement.

I just discovered that the nifty free tools that Google gives you to search sites are limited. They only supply 64 results tops. You have to pay an annual fee to get more. So now I am thinking integrating google might not be the best idea.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Last edited: May 28, 2009 18:05:06

When you get the page expired notice, I just refresh the page. It only happens on the first page of the search results......not any other.

The thing that irritates me is being told I can't make a search so soon after the last one. I read so fast that if there's only one post, I'm done and ready to go back. (This is on the New Posts page)

Will

"You're done, once you're a surfer you're done. You're in. It's like the mob or something. You're not getting out." - Kelly Slater

The Luau Cinders

Staredge
The thing that irritates me is being told I can't make a search so soon after the last one. I read so fast that if there's only one post, I'm done and ready to go back. (This is on the New Posts page)

Again, this is an artifact of the crude search engine that the phpBB forums use. Searching is very expensive, and people could bring the site to its knees if they did nothing but execute searches willy nilly. They attempt to throttle it to make up for the crude techniques they currently use.

I'm looking into some better full-site searches now.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

morphball

Brian
I'm probably going to punt and just incorporate a google search as a first attempt in SG101 2.0.

I was faced with the same decision years back for my last employer, but ultimately decided not to reinvent the engine... the free one works fine.

Unfortunately it seems to be limited to 64 results. Shocked

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Although not the most feature rich search engine in the world, I don't have any trouble finding things I'm looking for as long as I display the posts instead of threads, select the proper forum, use quotes, search for specific authors, etc.

For example, my last search was to find all posts that were made by IvanP that had the term "echo" in the post. Returned two pages worth of results. Voila! More than adequate IMO.

Ryan
The Secret Samurai Website
The Secret Samurai on Facebook

I think I found a good solution for SG101 2.0. At least I'll give it a try.

Haystack using the Xapian engine.

Monkey

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Hah, I'm actually a *NIX CLI geek from way back... there's a GUI equivalent to everything these days, but old habits die hard.

I didn't know there were such limitations with Google now, good to know. It looks to still be the best external search service out there anyway, as other ones like Atomz have search or crawling caps that wouldn't work here either. I'll try to keep an eye out for any other free packages or scripts I find though. (My current employer is going to want this info, anyway.)

Mike
http://www.youtube.com/morphballio

Brian, are you sure about the 64-result limit for CSE? I'm trying to find information on it, but I can't even find mention of any caps in the terms of service. Just to ensure it's not just hearsay, I wonder if it would be worth setting up a test and querying it 64+ times?

Mike
http://www.youtube.com/morphballio

morphball: yes they don't advertise the limit very well. However check the red letters here:

http://groups.google.com/group/Google-AJAX-Search-API

When I played with the search API on google itself I would only get 8 pages of 8 results each.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Apparently, the thinking is that most people will click something long before reaching the 64th result, which definitely assumes a lot. This is pretty interesting, also confirming your findings and what the AJAX forum said:

Google API limits results to 64, which limits the types of businesses you can build

Mike
http://www.youtube.com/morphballio

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