PCFormat Forum Archive

Hi

Just want to find out if I am the only one with this issue. I click the "profile" button (under everyones posts) and there you have an option to "Search all users posts". All OK thus far. I get a list of say, 20 odd last posts made by that member. When I click the page numbers at the bottom to see whats on the next pages I get "No topics or posts met your search criteria".

This is not only on that feature... if you search just about anything else using the search-engine what ever is on another page will give that message...

Help?

Sounds like the search index is a bit buggered.

I'd have to rebuild it, and given the sheer size of the forums, it would take hours (maybe even days) to do.

I get the exact same problem. I thought I was doing something wrong.

This has been a problem for over a year already. I think Cameron never rebuilt the index for that very reason; it'll take forever. But even a day's worth of downtime is less annoying than not being able to search properly.

OK, I've done some research into the phpBB 2 search algorithm, and it may not be even worth bothering to fix this. For the time being.

The search function of phpBB uses 3 tables:

• search_wordlist (this contains a unique entry for each word that has been posted in the forum)
• search_wordmatch (this contains pairs of data of which posts include which words from the search_wordlist)
• search_results (this contains the last searches the users executed)

Nothing terribly complicated about that. There's just one problem - it doesn't scale very well, so large boards such as this one end up with search issues, such as what you guys are currently experiencing.

My feeling is to ignore this problem for now and revisit it when we look into migrating to phpBB 3. Two reasons for this: firstly, phpBB 3 has a better search algorithm for large boards (which is a mysql fulltext search option), and secondly, the search index has to be recreated from scratch anyway when converting, so it doesn't really make sense to rebuild it now.

Out of curiousity, when do you plan to change to phpBB 3? How much of a mission is it going to be to do the crossover?

I34z1k wrote:Out of curiousity, when do you plan to change to phpBB 3?

I don't know yet.

I34z1k wrote:How much of a mission is it going to be to do the crossover?

It's a real mission. We're looking at the forum being out of commission for an entire weekend at MINIMUM, folks. This is, once again, due to the sheer size of the forum.

Wow cool stuff. I think the site should redirect to some chat thing so we can bother each other while it's down

<ot>
Ronald, do you have any experience at all with Fireboard?
</ot>

schase wrote:<ot>
Ronald, do you have any experience at all with Fireboard?
</ot>

psst who is Ronald?

jee wrote:

schase wrote:<ot>
Ronald, do you have any experience at all with Fireboard?
</ot>

psst who is Ronald?

And yes, I have been called Ronald McDonald before.

To answer schase's question: no, never used it. I can play around with it though, but that will only be when I have a few hours of free time - something that's a bit lacking right now.

Lol, and right after I sent you a PM in this regard! Never mind then.

Psst, I just thought "Ronald" sounded more appropriate in the specific context than Kieron.

There's 2 search functions on the site. The one at the top works for forum posts, the other one (on the left) looks for submitted articles and news. They work for me, although I think it needs to be tuned for quotations for even more accurate searches.

Search by user forum posts by post and with "the" or "a" as the keywords. It doesn't like blank, RON please change this on PHPBB3?

How big is the database? I remember Cameron said it was 100MB. But going to PHPBB3 probably means changing table structures and some good T-SQL knowledge to do the conversion. Maybe a fresh BB3 install is needed as a dual boot option and you can slowly pull the data across from the BB2 tables. MySQL Administrator is an excellent tool for MySQL databases, you can even use a windows PC to connect to the database engines, the frontend is good and works in Linux.

Hex_Rated wrote:Search by user forum posts by post and with "the" or "a" as the keywords. It doesn't like blank, RON please change this on PHPBB3?

The search index won't index words that it regards as common. The mysql fulltext search option introduced with phpBB 3 may make this better though.

Hex_Rated wrote:How big is the database? I remember Cameron said it was 100MB.

At the time of me posting this, it's around 580MB. The posts and posts_text tables (290MB combined) as well as the aforementioned search_wordmatch table (193MB and 12.8 million rows) are the main culprits. (And you wonder why I said that the search algorithm doesn't scale well on large boards?)

Hex_Rated wrote:But going to PHPBB3 probably means changing table structures and some good T-SQL knowledge to do the conversion. Maybe a fresh BB3 install is needed as a dual boot option and you can slowly pull the data across from the BB2 tables

The phpBB developers did write a conversion script to do this. You have to install a fresh copy of phpBB 3, then run the conversion script. All it does is populate the phpBB 3 tables and copy additional files (such as the avatars) across. It leaves the old database untouched. Obviously you would disable the old forum while you run the conversion, otherwise you'll end up with inconsistent data.

I did mention the problem earlier though - on large boards, it takes a while. A very long while.

I have another issue. its just told me on the side bar that i have a new private message, yet, the top bar says i have no new messages, even when i'm staring at this unread message in my inbox.

sorry, i know this is off topic but i din't see the point in starting a new thread