search function for this forum???

[dj jones]

hi all

I absolutely cannot find the 'search' button to search forum posts here.

Can someone enlighten me? and not laugh too hard .... ;>

thnx

[Zild]

The search button is disabled for Junior Members - it was receiving such heavy use that it took the server down once, so the people who run the site had to restrict who can use it...

In fact, somebody asked pretty much the same question a couple of days ago. If you had access to the search button, you could have found that out

For this reason, the community here is pretty unforgiving of people who ask questions that have already been answered. But there is now a google search tool at the top right of the page - apparently, if you set that to search just the forums, it can be pretty effective :)

[KukriKhan]

Thanks for answering, Zild. Actually, our 38,000+ page forum, when searched too often by too many people was crashing the forum repeatedly, so we've had to disable the in-house search function for everyone (Moderators included), until we find a suitable replacement, or figure out which 20,000 pages to delete. We're working on that, and the Google search works pretty well in the meantime (it just hasn't yet cached all our pages - the more we use it, the more it will cache and "crawl" our forum).


So dj jones, you weren't missing any link. Thanks for your attempt to play by the 'usual rules' for forums. Use Google for now, please.

And welcome to the Org

[ah_dut]

Welcome to the org dj Jones I believe you know where this stuff comes from eh?

[Havard]

Thanks for answering, Zild. Actually, our 38,000+ page forum, when searched too often by too many people was crashing the forum repeatedly, so we've had to disable the in-house search function for everyone (Moderators included), until we find a suitable replacement, or figure out which 20,000 pages to delete. We're working on that, (...):

What kind of database do you run the forum on? Upgrading MySQL from v3 to v4, with it's built in free text search is supposed to give huge benefits to search performance/server load

[KukriKhan]

We hoped so too...but it hasn't been our experience over the past 3 months.

Server TypeFreeBSDWeb
Serverapache2handler
MySQL4.0.20-log
PHP4.3.5
PHP Max Post Size8M
PHP Memory LimitNone
MySQL Packet Size1.00 MB
Data Usage422.18 MB
Index Usage35.04 MB

[Havard]

We hoped so too...but it hasn't been our experience over the past 3 months.

Have you tried asking around on vbulletin.com? eva2000 sure knows his stuff there...

[dj jones]

Thanks for answering, Zild. Actually, our 38,000+ page forum, when searched too often by too many people was crashing the forum repeatedly, so we've had to disable the in-house search function for everyone (Moderators included), until we find a suitable replacement, or figure out which 20,000 pages to delete. We're working on that, and the Google search works pretty well in the meantime (it just hasn't yet cached all our pages - the more we use it, the more it will cache and "crawl" our forum).


So dj jones, you weren't missing any link. Thanks for your attempt to play by the 'usual rules' for forums. Use Google for now, please.

And welcome to the Org

Thanks - heh heh, it took me 2 days just to find what forum I put this post in!

regards