[Closed] Forum Search Gone?

It's one of the bugs mentioned in that prominent, sticky thread about the updates.

Oh...

You'll be in trouble with cougar for starting this and not putting it on the correct thread. You'd better find that thread. Somehow.

I'd have to put a link to it but, you know, how does that work?

I'm fairly sure what you've been trying to use has always been there and always just searched articles - there used to be an additional box for forum searches.

Anyway this seems a good reason to just switch to https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Asingletrackworld.com for forum searches (I'm hoping they'll just put a link to that on the forum page).

Oh No!

I came to see if anyone has a Saris Bones bike rack for sale but alas, the search bar now only searches the articles and the advanced search function is GONE! 🙁😢

I have tried using google and "site:singletrackworld.com(search term)" which only brings up a load of discussion posts about the saris bones.

Is there a way to use google to search the For Sale forum specifically and have it display the results in chronological order?

Hoping there are some tech people who can help....

The search function was always rubbish anyway - much better to use singletrackworld + search term in google.

The default search for the forum is not fit for purpose so we have turned it off. It principally fails because it searches the entire database of 9 million posts on every use. That is pretty inefficient and usually grinds the forum to a halt for everyone.

So we are developing our own custom search function based on something called Elastic Stack. That works by separating the search from the general forum functions so they can both operate without affecting each other. Hope to be rolling that out soon.

At the risk of stating the obvious, do all those old posts actually need to be in the main forum database? Would it be easier to move those that get locked after a period of inactivity to a read-only archive that is accessible through a separate search facility?

That is one option we considered. But the one we are going with maintains the forum structure while separating out search from the standard forum functions. Search is the problem, not the size of the database. We are tackling it by making search work rather than changing the forum structure to match the poor search function.

Cool, makes sense. Thanks for the reply.

Another wee point, Forums, which used to be Forum activity, almost ok I can see the idea, it's good. but the only problem is when you click on the replies created, it's shows up all the posts, but there is no way to actually click back into a thread from the replies list.

Essentially how I navigated the forum, well atleast how I kept track of previous involved conversations, will you be implementing a clickable link in these? If I click the posted 8 minutes ago, I'd expect that to take me to the page, but it doesn't go anywhere, just bumps you a few lines down the same page.

Anyhow, just a heads up. Fix this I'll be happy! 🙂 (ps would it be really nice if said link went to the last unread post)

(I've not read the other thread either mind, I'll stick my nose in there.)

Yup it's broke, it's on list seosamh77.

cool, cheers drac.

The default search for the forum is not fit for purpose so we have turned it off. It principally fails because it searches the entire database of 9 million posts on every use. That is pretty inefficient and usually grinds the forum to a halt for everyone.

So we are developing our own custom search function based on something called Elastic Stack. That works by separating the search from the general forum functions so they can both operate without affecting each other. Hope to be rolling that out soon.

Thank you Mark, good to know it's coming back.

Forums, which used to be Forum activity, almost ok I can see the idea, it’s good. but the only problem is when you click on the replies created, it’s shows up all the posts, but there is no way to actually click back into a thread from the replies list.

As i also found out when trying to find my way back to this thread!

Again it's good to know that it'll be sorted 👍🏻