When is search going to be fixed FFS?

[Tunku]

As above...

[Dirty Boy]

I've required the search function a few times of late, and it's fooked.

I want to go back years!!

[Minskii]

try entering the following into google (without quotes) "siteistonheads.com" along with what ever you're searching for.

ETA stupid smiley! that's a colon and a p.

Edited by Minskii on Wednesday 5th November 14:22

[Dirty Boy]

it's still not picking up what I want, and I KNOW that thread exists!

[RacingPete]

The search runs off one database that corrupted the data every time it tried to build the search database and thus we had to rebuild it 2 days ago. To make sure everything is working OK we are introducing more and more data into the search database everynight and monitoring how it is performing.

The search system never had data further back than 6 months for Pie and Piston, and a year for the other forums which is the initial design of the system and due to the amount of forum posts we have.

I am looking at redesigning the whole system this month so that it works much better, so please bare with us while we work to improve it.

[NiceCupOfTea]

It's a shame. There is a wealth of accumulated knowledge on PH with some solid gold info posted over the years. It's all still there if you know where to look, but with search only going back a year it's as good as useless

There must be some way of being able to go back further - different databases for different forums or something?

[David Godfrey]

as said above, does using google with site:www.pistonheads.com/gassing after the subject words your looking for help? as an example:
tamora site:www.pistonheads.com/gassing

[NiceCupOfTea]

Yes, Google picks up some stuff but it's a long way from being comprehensive.

[miniman]

With all due respect to Will and Pete and the team, I simply can't see how its possible to scratch-build a search mechanism for a site with this much content. Surely the answer is to put in some heavy-duty search kit? There are plenty of open source options, and paid for options. Before ruling out the cost of a commercial system, I would be looking at the potential revenue from serving up more pages by letting people actually find what they are looking for.

[RacingPete]

I think the search system works fine when there is all the data in the database (the problem that currently is complained about is that the system doesn't have data back 10 years, or the latest posts of today etc)

So, if I can solve the issue of the lack of data in the database then the search should be back on track for what people need (plus adding a few little tweaks to searching thread titles and the correct ordering on search results)

This is what I will be looking at this month so that I can have a system where it solves the above problems. - Sorry for the bold but it seems like people keep missing this bit

A third party option is a possibility but finding the resource, with all the other commitments of the site to look into these solutions we currently at the moment don't have the time even if it will help us in the long run.