The Search Feature

[Zany Reaper]

Hello All,

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the search feature is a little slow compared to other forums?

This could just be me being naïve, as these forums have a hell of a lot of info now. It can take me well over a minute to perform a simple search of the forums. I'm fairly sure this also isn't the computer I'm using as I see no apparent Internet traffic when waiting for the search to complete. This' even when I search for something quite specific like "shadowsword" as a query.

On another note - are there any guidelines posted on the forum on how to use the search function? I assume they're no different from the usual vBulletin features. Regular expressions for example, would be very useful for more general matches.

[Celution]

I noticed this too, and because of this, it can be quite annoying when after waiting all that time your search was not worth it and you'll have to try again AND having to wait 20 seconds to do that.

In general, the search is quite slow indeed.

[ÜberJumper]

We will have to look at installing an alternate search engine to improve performance. To do that, it often requires forum maintenance as the index has to be rebuilt.

[Salamander]

Regular expression searching is a pain in the ass to implement safely; nearly all regex engine in widespread use can be used for denial-of-service attacks ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS )
Plus, just about the only people who understand regular expressions are a subset of programmers; it's just not worth all the effort.

[Zany Reaper]

Salamander - Ah I see. I still think that some sort of advanced search feature beyond simply typing in the name would be good, like logical operators?