Omnimaga

Omnimaga => Site Feedback and Questions => Topic started by: fb39ca4 on February 22, 2011, 03:49:16 pm

Title: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: fb39ca4 on February 22, 2011, 03:49:16 pm: Just now, I was looking for the TNOC thread. I typed "tnoc" into the search box and nothing came up ??? Maybe we could use google custom search or something.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: JosJuice on February 22, 2011, 03:52:20 pm: Yes, I agree that it can be hard to find information using search. A better search would be nice, but I have no idea if it's hard to implement...
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 22, 2011, 03:52:49 pm: From where did you search? If you are in site feedback sections and search for TNOC, it will only search through these 2 sections. You need to be on the board index to search all sections, or you have to use Advanced search (click the magnifier icon).

That said I never liked SMF search engine, though. Nothing that can be done, but I never figured out how to set it up so results are as relevant as possible.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: fb39ca4 on February 22, 2011, 04:17:48 pm: Oh, I get it. We should have two search buttons, one for the current forum section and one for the whole forum.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: Darl181 on February 22, 2011, 09:39:32 pm: Or it could tell you which part of the forum you're searching.
Another idea would be to have search in its own page, like the reply page or something. From that page, one can select options such as which boards to search and stuff like that.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: Deep Toaster on February 22, 2011, 09:42:11 pm: I finally found this: http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=help;page=searching
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: Darl181 on February 22, 2011, 09:46:33 pm: [flashback to quick modify]
Look at the magnifying glass...
http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=search;advanced
O.O
/me goes off to try to find other half-hidden icons
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: ruler501 on February 22, 2011, 09:53:57 pm: I think the bars at the top need a reformat on this site. i believe this site is set up wonderfully but with a few changes the navigation might become simpler and easier.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: fb39ca4 on February 22, 2011, 09:57:06 pm: I agree. Also, some of the links on the right hand side of the main page need to be updated, with many of the forum sections being restructured.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: ruler501 on February 22, 2011, 09:58:51 pm: I hope this happens to make this site even more amazing than it already is (If that is possible:)) This site is truthfully wonderful especially if you add in how wonderful the community is.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 22, 2011, 11:05:27 pm: Yeah I just don't know how to setup the top navbar really. The issue is that I try to make the site run in 1024 pixels width, so if I add too many links the bar will look screwy. Initially I was gonna put 2 bars, but I discovered it was beyond my PHP/CSS knowledge.

I think the IRC link is redundant, though, since later we added OmnomIRC anyway.

If I knew how, I would just stuff some links in the light blue bar above, which barely has anything.

That said, the advanced search link icon needs to be changed to something saying advanced search and the front page needs to have some extra links. X.x
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: ztrumpet on February 22, 2011, 11:37:47 pm: Quote from: DJ_O on February 22, 2011, 11:05:27 pm
That said, the advanced search link icon needs to be changed to something saying advanced search and the front page needs to have some extra links. X.x
Maybe it could say just "Custom" instead of "Advanced Search" to save width. :)
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 22, 2011, 11:47:13 pm: Probably. One thing is that I do not want to change too many things either, however, as I will have 6 themes to edit one by one.

Also a sidebar is out of the question, since EzPortal doesn't support that on forum pages (the forum will appear below everything.)
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 24, 2011, 09:25:28 pm: Guys,

In the search settings, there's a weight setting that was a bit confusing with the settings in the first part of this page: http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Search_(admin)

Everything was set to 50, meaning equal for all. I decided to change the age of the last matching message so it has priority (2), then set subject title to lower and everything else was set to 0.

I wonder if it will help the relevancy of search results? Note that the board will still search from the part you're in, though, not parent folders.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: Munchor on February 26, 2011, 02:23:28 am: Quote from: fb39ca4 on February 22, 2011, 03:49:16 pm
Just now, I was looking for the TNOC thread. I typed "tnoc" into the search box and nothing came up ??? Maybe we could use google custom search or something.

I actually find the current one quite good, the 'Revise Search' can help sometimes, but changing to a better one would always be good.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 28, 2011, 04:51:28 am: Well if you look at my last post, I actually did some tweaking to the engine. Maybe it will work slightly better now? However the issue about only searching /* instead of */* is gonna remain. Basically unless you use advanced search, the results will be based on your forum location. From http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=forum it will search the entire forum, from http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?board=12.0 it will search Board #12 and all the sub-forums there, from http://ourl.ca/9318 it will only search this topic, and so on. Any page that isn't a sub-forum, board index or a topic will act as the board index, though, so for example if you search from the rules page it will search the entire forum too.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: Deep Toaster on March 20, 2011, 07:46:44 pm: The higher priority on post date is causing problems for me. I'm trying to find news posts from long ago, and they're not showing up, even when I put pretty much the whole title in the search bar :-\
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 06, 2011, 08:00:11 pm: Hmm they are supposed to show up. Maybe it's a problem on your end.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: Deep Toaster on April 06, 2011, 08:00:42 pm: They're showing up, but pretty far down the list.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 06, 2011, 08:04:16 pm: Oh, that's normal then. There are unfortunately no way to show posts based on relevancy it seems. :/
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: Darl181 on April 06, 2011, 08:05:46 pm: If you click on the magnifying glass (advanced search), there's a drop down menu: "Search order"
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 06, 2011, 08:06:32 pm: Yeah, although even that still gives weird results sometimes. It's more of an issue with SMF search engine. It's not as bad as how they have it setup on SMF board, though.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: Deep Toaster on April 06, 2011, 08:07:26 pm: Hmm, any chance we could integrate Google Custom Search in here? That seems to work well for some sites.
Title: Re: I think we need a better search engine.
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 06, 2011, 08:51:55 pm: I don't like Google custom search. results are sometimes even more scrambled and thousands of pages ends up missing.