Problems with Advanced Search

Started by imno007, July 09, 2012, 02:16:30 PM

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imno007

I'm not sure when it occurred, but some time over the last few weeks my board's advanced search function has taken a turn for the worse. This is without me making any changes to the search settings, mind you, or any other changes, so maybe it happened after the last upgrade? (Using 2.0.2) I can search from the homepage, and using the basic search after clicking the search button in the menu, but the advanced search function is now very unreliable, whether searching by topic subject only or not. For example, I did a search from the homepage that returned over 70 results, over 60 of them with the specific term right in the subject line. Using advanced search (with ALL boards checked), searching by topic subject line only, the same search yielded exactly FOUR results. Keep in mind that this is with over 60 topics having that specific search term in the subject line. So why is the advanced search returning only four results? But then I'll search another term using the advanced search and it seems to work fine, the results returned will be roughly equal what the regular search returns. The worst, though, is when I try using advanced search to look for one specific topic and it won't return a result. I could add a topic called "Jack is a big boy because he eats all his vegetables" (for example!) but then when I use the advanced search to look by subject line, using that exact same sentence, spelling and punctuation 100% exact, it won't find anything - but the basic search will. So I'm not sure what's going on.

I've deleted the old index and created a new one, created a custom index, etc., but nothing has made a difference. Too bad the Big Boards guys are hogging the Sphinx script!

Apologies in advance if this is some known problem and I missed it! Or maybe I'm just overlooking something obvious here, that's entirely possible. ;)

Adish - (F.L.A.M.E.R)

It could be because you might have the search selecting, "Search in this board" instead of globally?

imno007

No, as stated above, I encounter the problem with ALL boards checked. I've been using smf for over six years now, I haven't changed anything.

Chas Large

Have you tried board maintenance, find errors and cleaning the cache and then rebuilding the index? It only takes some weird code to get into a topic heading to throw the search out, I've had that where someone posted a subject line in a reply with smiley codes and @s.
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imno007

Quote from: Chas Large on August 07, 2012, 05:10:25 PM
Have you tried board maintenance, find errors and cleaning the cache and then rebuilding the index? It only takes some weird code to get into a topic heading to throw the search out, I've had that where someone posted a subject line in a reply with smiley codes and @s.

Hello. Yes, I do those kinds of things on a regular basis. And I have created a custom index and rebuilt another full index - did it again just a few days ago. And I've been playing with the various weights, although I hadn't messed with them before I started having trouble. I just don't know. Some times the search works fine, sometimes it doesn't. It's pretty much a crapshoot these days. ;)

timetraveller

Did anything get resolved with this issue. Some of my users are experiencing the same problem.

imno007

No, unfortunately. I've just advised members to do quick searches from the homepage rather than do topic searches, until the next SMF release, which will hopefully resolve whatever the issue is. If it doesn't, then I don't know, I guess I'll have to hire someone who's more code savvy than me to try to fix it. Because I sure don't want to wait another six-plus months for the next update, hoping that one will finally fix it. ;)

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