It Searches!

[trilobyte]

Hooray, we survived! Thank you to those who were using the site last night, and had to deal with some very sluggish behavior. We've completed some important behind-the-scenes maintenance on ePlaya search.

Not only do we now have a fully indexed search engine (something I don't think we've had in a while), but it's an improved engine that should give faster and better results, plus allow you to do phrase matching. Search for a phrase, such as "I like cheese" (in quotes), and the search engine will return a list of messages that contain that phrase.

693,421 posts indexed. And counting, since it can now properly keep track of new threads and posts.

[Elderberry]

Wonderful. We've needed this for a long time.

How often will the board be reindex to include new posts? Will this be done automatically?

Thanks.

[ygmir]

Trilobyte:

[theCryptofishist]

Looks like Ygmir is the champion cheese-liker on this board, with a full 6 of the 18 posts of cheese-liking.

[ygmir]

Looks like Ygmir is the champion cheese-liker on this board, with a full 6 of the 18 posts of cheese-liking.

*standing tall and proud*

[trilobyte]

The old backend was supposed to have done periodic re-indexing on its own, but from what I can gather that process got stuck at some point (or may have gotten stuck on a regular basis), which contributed to search not being very effective in the past.

The new search backend uses a SQL database, and so doesn't have the same need for periodic re-indexing that the old system did. It tracks and indexes posts and threads as they're made. From the research I did before making the change, it seems that it's a much more reliable piece of technology. But I have the ability to check on it remotely, and can periodically check the system to make sure it's working properly, and even give it a kick (force it to re-index) if I need to.

[Elderberry]

SQL? As in MSSQL? Or did you mean mySQL, as in open source?

[trilobyte]

It's MySQL (open source).