[ANNOUNCEMENT]

As of yesterday at 5PM (Eastern US), the Café's search engine was shut down due to being the cause of the recent slowdowns. The specific cause is keyword searches. All other functions of the search engine do not appear to cause any problems. Links to the search engine have been removed, except the "view posts in the last 30 days" link on the member profile pages. I will be removing that soon so there is no confusion.

I will be looking at everything as soon as I can. There will be a lot of thought put into this, so it will not be a quick process. My goal is to come up with a solution that does not change any of the search engine's features, yet still provides accurate results within an acceptable period of time.

[SEARCH ENGINE HISTORY]

For the benefit of those who have not been with us since the beginning, the search engine has been a focal point of many discussions and has undergone several revisions. The original version was very slow and extremely limited, but it did offer one thing that nearly all present-day forums don't: Exact phrase searches. This was possible because it used a very slow database function. It didn't take long for that to start crashing the Café, so we had to come up with a solution. I don't think anybody ever really realized it, but version 2 was an almost complete copy of the search engine used with phpBB2. That one, too, started to crash the forums. I thought it would last a long time, but in reality, it didn't last that long at all. There were still complaints about it, too, most of which were because it didn't offer exact phrase searches. I made some changes to the original phpBB design to include certain limits so that it wouldn't crash the Café. It worked - but there was a deluge of complaints. People were very vocal about it. Everybody seemed to want the whole smash: Two-character words, being able to search all posts without regard to when posted and, of course, exact phrase searches. It took me a while, but I came up with a version I really thought would do it. It answered (nearly) everyone's needs and wants, but at a delayed price. That one was shut down yesterday. Soon I will begin considering options and thinking about the next version: V4. Who knows where that one will end up?

[GENERAL THOUGHTS]

Trust me, this is not going to be an easy task. I fully understand how important the search engine is for the Café - indeed, for any site - and I will do my best, but please allow me the time I need to work it out. Technically speaking, there is nothing wrong with the search engine we have been using, it's just not efficient enough to handle the massive amount of data in use here. In fact, I am using the same search engine structure for two other sites with perfect success. It's simply a matter of data. For those who have any interest in the figures, the total size of the Café database is over 1.4GB. (That's 1.4 gigabytes, folks. ) The search engine itself currently contains 282,387 keywords, with a total keyword/post-ID data size of nearly 235MB. These are gargantuan numbers to deal with on a single server. Is there an answer? I don't know that yet. I'm only one guy. Other forum packages have several developers, or a complete team. However, if there *is* a solution, I will find it. Hey, I figured out how to offer exact phrase searches in a modern forum, didn't I?

And now, let the process begin ... hang in there, everybody!

Apparently you can use google to search specific websites, including the Café, but I cannot remember how exactly. If anyone knows, then could they please post it here for others?

As a quick fix then you can use Google as an internal site search engine.

Example= torn and restored site:www.themagiccafe.com

Type in what you are searching for, then leave a space, then type the following. site:wwwthemagiccafe.com

The only problem is that the google results wont be up to date, but better than nothing I suppose.

Can you not just move th ecafe to a more poweful server?

Gary

I am looking forward to see the result... of all your good and hard work, Gene!

Edith

The following link allows google to operate as an internal search engine. Perhaps it can be used until a proper fix has been found.

http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/scri......ch.shtml

Hope you will find a solution quickly.

Perhaps you can install an auto delete function on the members search so that key words are not memorized by the search engine to prevent overloading the system. Just a thought!

We all appreciate your past efforts and grand successes....we'll survive this one....good luck. Does Starbucks deliver???

Gene, several sites--including U.S. government ones--embed the Google search engine into their sites. Couldn't that be a solution to the problem?

I for one think it's a shame to disable the search feature.

Manoj

Already mentioned manoj

Yes, I'll be doing something about that when I can get to it.

Someone mentioned searching using http://www.google.com/ in another topic. Just add "site:themagiccafe.com" to your search string without the double quotes.

You can even search titles in a specific forum using Google. For example, to search the Pick a card...any card forum titles for an exact match to the string "three card monte" you would enter the following into the Google search text box.

The double quotes cause a case insensitive exact string match. You could leave them off on the first quoted string and you'd find topics that contain "three", "card", and "monte", but not necessarily together or even in that order.

Of course, someone could put "Pick a card...any card » »" in a post too and it would show up in the title search I describe, but I doubt anyone has posted that, and I hope they won't.

This is not quite as good as the Magic Café's title search was since each forum's titles have to be searched separately, and also the search data is not updated in real time. But it does work pretty well.

erm..you just did!

I can't find the link "view posts in the last 30 days". Has this feature been removed too?
I am trying find a post from a few days ago and can't find it.

Yes. Read my first post.

Gene, Do you really live in Rockford, MI? That's crazy! You're like my next door neighbor. I live in Grandville. Why did I never notice this before? Crazy!
Dann

Actually, you just reminded me that I have to change that. I live in Howard City now. If you ever want to stop by and learn how it all started just let me know.

Gagging for the search engine to return! Google is ok, but the Café-specific one is vital!

I really miss the search function

all the best and hopefully a solution is found