search doesn't work at all in a subforum

[Franciscus]

Our SMF 2.02 forum has  three forums, let's call them A, B and C. I know forum C contains a lot of content with the word "widget", so I navigate to that forum, as in http://forums.ourforum.com/forumC/ [nofollow] and type "widget" (without the quotes) in the top-right search bar.

Zero results.

But it works correctly when I navigate to: http://forums.ourforum.com/index.php [nofollow] and do the same search.

I think this is an extremely serious bug that prevents users from searching the forum, and the reason we have the forum is to avoid answering support email, so the issue is very, very serious for us, causing tremendous support load since we switched from vBulletin.

We are prepared to pay anyone who can fix this.

Search method: No Index, match whole words only, enable simple search.

Thanks in advance!

[emanuele]

How did you separate the 3 forums?

[NanoSector]

Mods installed?

[Franciscus]

Mods:

Global Headers Footers    2.0.1
Pretty URLs    1.0

The forums are just three "forums", I don't understand the question on how I "separated" them. Just subforums inside the forum.

have a look at forums.owndoc.com [nofollow] for the actual forum.

I changed search to use an index now, so the behavior may now be fixed (for the time being, we had a lot of trouble with search since the beginning)

[emanuele]

Well, those are three boards, not forums, now it makes sense.
It was a "communication issue".

BTW, no matter how I search, "widget" doesn't show up any result. I even tried google, but zero, I can't get any result in the entire forum. Are you sure this word is used?
I tried a more generic search like "biggest" and I got results on all the boards.

[Franciscus]

Sorry - "widget" was just a generic example, it won't work.

The issue is that when a board is navigated to, no search works at all. Only when you go to the "root" of the boards.

However, when I make modifications to how Search works (with index, without), things work for a little while, until it again stops working.

This has been a reproducable problem since we installed SMF many months ago, and no combination of search settings solves it permanently.

[emanuele]

I assume you are using MySQL, right?
Does it take a long time to stop working?

[Franciscus]

Yes, MySQL.

It seems to take a couple of days before some kind of re-building of the index or something like that is required to fix things again, temporarily.

Thanks for your help.

[Franciscus]

But the really strange issue is that it works in the "main" index, but not in the actual board.

So that would be a real bug, a very specific issue.

[emanuele]

Search in boards and in the entire forum is exactly the same thing (as far as I remember, but in this area Spuds has much more knowledge than me).
At the moment I still get 6 results in board 1, 1 in board 2 and 11 in the third board (to keep track).

Next time you notice a problem, try to use the search button (not the quick search) and restrict the search to only one board and see if anything change.

[Franciscus]

The search button always works, it's only quick search that is broken.

However, our forum members use mainly Quick Search..

[mashby]

Isn't the Quick Search aware of where you are when you use it?

Code Select Expand

// Search within current topic?
if (!empty($context['current_topic']))
echo '
<input type="hidden" name="topic" value="', $context['current_topic'], '" />';
// If we're on a certain board, limit it to this board ;).
elseif (!empty($context['current_board']))
echo '
<input type="hidden" name="brd[', $context['current_board'], ']" value="', $context['current_board'], '" />';
The SMF site here has a drop-down that affects what the above is doing, but I think that's a modification we've made, correct?

[NanoSector]

Isn't the Quick Search aware of where you are when you use it?

Code Select Expand

// Search within current topic?
if (!empty($context['current_topic']))
echo '
<input type="hidden" name="topic" value="', $context['current_topic'], '" />';
// If we're on a certain board, limit it to this board ;).
elseif (!empty($context['current_board']))
echo '
<input type="hidden" name="brd[', $context['current_board'], ']" value="', $context['current_board'], '" />';


Yes, it is, which is weird.

The SMF site here has a drop-down that affects what the above is doing, but I think that's a modification we've made, correct?

Yep.

[Franciscus]

It looks like there is a fix? Is there any code I can patch, if so, where?

Thanks for your help!

[mashby]

Well, yeah, you can remove the code pasted above from Themes/default/index.template.php (and any other themes you might be using). I'd say that this really isn't a bug, but a non-communicated feature. If the drop-down menu that appears on this site was present in the standard package, that would at least give everyone a visual indication of why/how the search works.

[emanuele]

Sorry, now I'm lost.
Are we talking about the fact that if you are in board A using the quick search doesn't search in board B or are we talking about the fact that from time to time search doesn't work?

[Franciscus]

To clarify:

I am in board three, and the quick search does not work at all. You can try searching for a word that occurs dozens of times in board three when you are navigated to it, and no matter how often you try it doesn't yield any results.

However, when you navigate back to the main index of the forum, the quick search works just fine.

Also, when you are in board three and use the "normal" search, it also works fine.

So there seems to be a very serious bug with how quick search works (in some cases only!) - it simply doesn't work for the board you're in..

HOWEVER when I fiddle with how search is done (indexed, non-indexed etc.), suddenly quick search DOES work, but only for a few days, then it stops working again. I triend all combinations of index methods and nothing works longer than a few days.

So the story is we have a support board and noone can use the Quick Search function. It just does not give any results.

[emanuele]

Fine, let's stay like that for few days and see what happens, I'll try to monitor your site every day in the next week, if I miss something and the problem arises feel free to post here, so that we can try a couple of searches and try some suggestions. Is that okay?

[Franciscus]

Wow, that is very nice of you to offer this, we operate a web store and we are very interested in paying for custom development of various kinds on the forum, so if you have time for that and are interested, please contact me at info at owndoc dot com.

[emanuele]

Had a look today with the same keyword as before and still the same results.

If you have something to do, feel free to drop me a PM.