BoardTracker Search Mod v2 - a full search engine for your board!

[BoardTracker]

BoardTracker Search Mod - Version 2

This search hack replaces the built in vb search with boardtracker (http://www.boardtracker.com) search and results are fully integrated with your board. Search results can be threads from your board or all boards or a select group of boards - your choice!

Once installed, search from the search box on any page will pull results from boardtracker and display them within your board. 'Advanced Search' can still link to the existing vb search script or you can disable or restrict access to specific users (ie. admins, mods, paying members etc).

Results can be formated in any way you want with some simple template variables.

Options control panel allows you to switch the boardtracker search mod on or off at any time so you can switch between boardtracker and vb search whenever you want.

The following configuration options/defaults exist:

Switch search on/off

Switch 'safe filter' on/off

Switch global search option on/off

Board ID - you can limit search to just your board, or several boards you choose or ALL boards indexed by boardtracker.

Category ID - you can define a category on boardtracker and searches will only pull results from that category.

Default Sort Order - you can sort results by relevancy or by post date.

Default Search Scope - results can be limited to last day, week, month, year or all time.

Default Search Query - a search term that will be executed whenever the boardtracker search script is called directly with no params. For example you could set it to "site:yourdomain.com blah" and it will display all threads from your board about "blah"

Find Posts By User - replace the search links on user profiles and postbits.

Internal vB Search Allowed Usergroups - specify which usergroups are allowed to still use the built in vb search (search.php) and redirect all others to the bt search (searchbt.php). Leave empty to allow all users to still access search.php


User selections on the search form override the defaults.

The mod is very easy to install and consists of 1 php script to upload, 1 product xml file to install, 1 simple template edit. The xml product file creates one new template, an options panel and a few phrases.

You can see a demo here (http://demo.boardtracker.com/vb) which has the search set to global so results come from all boards in boardtracker (since there are no actual posts on the demo board to search ;) )

Also check out our topic tagging mod with cool tag clouds here (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=111887)

If your board is not yet indexed by BoardTracker, make sure to submit it! (http://www.boardtracker.com/boards/) :)


## New features in version 2..

Search posts by username
Search in specific forums
Search in related forums
Search by boardtracker category
RSS feed and alerts for searches
Global search option
Block or restrict the built in search to specific usergroups
More integration with vb search links (such as from member profile)
More widgets in the control panel to play with ;)


We also have a version for vB3.6 here..
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=123862



updates:
v2.0.1 - fixed typo in one phrase setting
v2.0.2 - fixed bug in searchbt.php affecting some people. To upgrade, just upload the new searchbt.php, no other action required.
v2.0.3 - minor html change in templates - not a required upgrade
v2.0.4 - update to searchbt.php
v2.0.5 - small change to 'stopwords' in search_boardtracker template
v2.0.6 - updated for new BoardTracker 2010. To upgrade, upload searchbt.php, install xml, minor template edits (param names)

[VaaKo]

I still don't get what boardtracker does

[BoardTracker]

BoardTracker is a search engine for boards.. also we provide email & IM alerts on threads matching your search terms and various other nifty features.

In the case of this mod it is basically a drop in replacement for the built in vb search which means you can provide your users with a good search system without any load on your servers. :cool:

[vampireus]

Does it support non-English characters?

[BoardTracker]

Does it support non-English characters?

Yes.

[Snake]

Thanks man! :)

[Mr Chad]

Holy shit this owns. Now i can integrate all my sites results :)

[vampireus]

I visit your demo site and it take me forever to load " Loading search results.." for a keyword "iPod" from "A week ago"

I make a search from my board, with global board search ON, and it take me forever to load " Loading search results.." too

If I choose to show results from my site only, BoardTracker Search Mod can't find anything until my board get indexed by BoardTracker?

I'm still confused about this.

[BoardTracker]

To show results from your board it needs to be indexed by boardtracker, we just added your board and sent you email with instructions on how to complete the process - let us know if you didn't get the email.

Results should be fast, allowing for a slight delay to pull results from a remote location rather than local but usually that shouldn't be noticable. If you still find it slow please ping and traceroute to boardtracker.com from your home pc and send us (email or PM) the response so we can check it further.

[BoardTracker]

Holy shit this owns. Now i can integrate all my sites results :)

Yep. :banana:

[vampireus]

I claimed my site on Boardtracker and categorized all the necessary forums. What should I do next?

I haven't got the email. Where did you send it to? Please send it to phuong131285@yahoo.com. Thanks.

[BoardTracker]

I claimed my site on Boardtracker and categorized all the necessary forums. What should I do next?

I haven't got the email. Where did you send it to? Please send it to phuong131285@yahoo.com. Thanks.
We will email to phuong131285@yahoo.com just in case even though you probably did the necesssary steps anyway.
Soon the board will be activated and indexed.

There are about 15 forums left unidexed. Are the supposed to be disabled?
Please advise..

[vampireus]

Only one unindexed now and it's not necessary :) Do I need to send an email to support@boardtracker.com to get my site activated?

[BoardTracker]

no need :) We'll take it from here

If anyone else installs this mod and his/her board is not in BoardTracker yet, don't forget to contact us so we can add it promptly.

[BoardTracker]

Update on the slowness with the search on the demo page.
Problem should be solved. Please verify.
(Thanks to Chad from BeastToast.com for helping with the debugging process)

[vampireus]

Good job :bunny:

[BoardTracker]

We are still fixing a bug that appears in IE.
Might require a small update for the installed template.
Updates soon...

Edit: fixed. New version (1.0.1) is available to download now.

[Mr Chad]

Very nice:

http://www.beasttoast.com/forum/searchbt.php?search=beasttoast&scope=4&order=1

[rex_b]

I do like this but not sure I want my users going to other sites.

[BoardTracker]

I do like this but not sure I want my users going to other sites.

You can configure it to only show results from your board (or several boards if you want) so your users wont be going anywhere you don't want them to. :cool:

[cd1986]

Sounds like a very interesting concept! Could this be integrated some how with the tag system mod for vb 3.5 - if it is not already?

[nitro]

Does this replace or coexist with the built in vb search ?

Can it be made not available to guests so a guest can only use the internal search ?

[Tralala]

What about if my board is private (ie: not open for public browsing or registration?)

Can I still install BoardTracker as an improvement to/replacement for vB's default search?

[BoardTracker]

Sounds like a very interesting concept! Could this be integrated some how with the tag system mod for vb 3.5 - if it is not already?

Do you mean to display tags (if they exist) in these search results like they appear on boardtracker itself?

[BoardTracker]

Does this replace or coexist with the built in vb search ?

Can it be made not available to guests so a guest can only use the internal search ?

It can replace or coexist - your choice. The default installation will replace it in the little dropdown search box that appears on every page but the 'advanced search' link below it will still lead to the built in vb search. You can easily replace that as well.

As for making it available only to registered members.. I guess it could with some additional tweaking, would have to look into it - are there existing mods that do this with the built in search? If so then that could perhaps be used to do the same with boardtracker search.

[BoardTracker]

What about if my board is private (ie: not open for public browsing or registration?)

Can I still install BoardTracker as an improvement to/replacement for vB's default search?

BoardTracker spiders boards using a normal user account "BoardTracker" so you can define exactly what forums you want it to access based on the vbulletin user permissions system.

If you want it to index private forums simply give that user account access to those. However this means that those threads are searchable on boardtracker to everyone - of course only the basic info that appears in the search results (title/snippet etc) is visible on boardtracker and they still have to register/login to your board to read the threads.

This is actually a good way to get new members since they get a small 'teaser' in the form of a snippet in search results on boardtracker or in tagclouds if the threads are tagged also and then they have to visit your board and register to read and reply. This way people will know that there is a thread about a topic that interests them on your board even if they had previously never heard of your board.

Also note that boardtracker has an alerts system which will send an email or instant message to our users based on alerts terms they define so they get alerted when a thread is posted on your board matching that term which helps bring in more visitors and new members to the boards.

[vampireus]

Do you spider member's profile on my board?

[BoardTracker]

Do you spider member's profile on my board?
Only info which is public and included in threads is spidered - basically the username and *optionally* homepage and IM (which is not ever displayed) which you can control through the boardtracker admin panel for your board - in other words you can choose if you want that info included in profiles on boardtracker. User profiles on boardtracker link to the relevant profile page on the board itself.

[vampireus]

Ok, thanks. I see there are successful scans & errors. What can be errors?

Will BT spider all my current & new threads or only new & a part of current threads?

[cd1986]

Do you mean to display tags (if they exist) in these search results like they appear on boardtracker itself?
Yes, i was playing with adding tags to my threads yesterday, and thought maybe if a tag was clicked on it could present threads from other boards with the same tags (if they exist) using the boardtracker system. I doubt many forums use tags (although i don't know), but would be great to have that kind of flexibility for the future!

[BoardTracker]

Ok, thanks. I see there are successful scans & errors. What can be errors?

Will BT spider all my current & new threads or only new & a part of current threads?
Errors might be missing threads (errors in VB system), wrong detection process on part of the BT Koalas, learning curve issues or timeouts etc..
If errors continue we will ivestigate further.

BT koalas scan only new threads :) They don't aimlessly go to the same thread again and again.

[BoardTracker]

Yes, i was playing with adding tags to my threads yesterday, and thought maybe if a tag was clicked on it could present threads from other boards with the same tags (if they exist) using the boardtracker system. I doubt many forums use tags (although i don't know), but would be great to have that kind of flexibility for the future!

Actually there could be quite a few forums with tags.. ;)

http://mods.invisionize.com/db/index.php/f/6314
http://www.phpbbhacks.com/download/6145
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=111887


We'll add tags to the search results in next version of this mod very soon. :cool:

[ShiningArcanine]

I am looking through your modification's XHTML code and I can see that it is not XHTML compliant. Is there any possibility of fixing this in version 1.0.2?

Edit: I tried cleaning up the XHTML as much as I could but I could not make it XHTML compliant without breaking the plugin. If it helps, here is what I managed to do:

$stylevar[htmldoctype]
<html dir="$stylevar[textdirection]" lang="$stylevar[languagecode]">
<head>
$headinclude
<title>$vboptions[bbtitle] - $vbphrase[search_forums]</title>
</head>
<body>

$header
$navbar

<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
<tr>
<td class="tcat">BoardTracker $vbphrase[thread] $vbphrase[search]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="alt1">

<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]">
<tr>
<td align="left">
<form style="margin: 0px;" action="" method="get">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="4">
<tr>
<td>$vbphrase[key_words]</td><td><input name="search" id="BT_SEARCH_INPUT" value="" /><input type="submit" value="$vbphrase[search_now]" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>$vbphrase[find_posts_from] </td>
<td><select name="scope" id="BT_SEARCH_SCOPE">
<option value="0">$vbphrase[yesterday]</option>
<option value="1">$vbphrase[a_week_ago]</option>
<option value="2">$vbphrase[a_month_ago]</option>
<option value="3">$vbphrase[a_year_ago]</option>
<option value="4">$vbphrase[any_date]</option>
</select></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>$vbphrase[sort_results_by]</td>
<td><select name="order" id="BT_SEARCH_ORDER">
<option value="0">$vbphrase[thread_start_date]</option>
<option value="1">$vbphrase[relevancy]</option>
</select></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
</td>
<td align="right">
<span><span id="BT_SEARCH_POWEREDBY" name="BT_SEARCH_POWEREDBY" /></span><br />
<br />
<span id="BT_SEARCH_NAVBAR" name="BT_SEARCH_NAVBAR" style="display:none">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%" style="margin-bottom:3px">
<tr valign="bottom">
<td align="right"><div class="pagenav" align="right">
<table class="tborder" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" border="0">
<tr>
<td class="vbmenu_control" style="font-weight:normal"><phrase 1="<SPAN ID=BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_PAGES_CURRENT NAME=BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_PAGES_CURRENT></SPAN>" 2="<SPAN ID=BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_PAGES_COUNT NAME=BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_PAGES_COUNT></SPAN>">$vbphrase[page_x_of_y]</phrase></td>
<td class="alt2 smallfont"><span id="BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_PAGENAV" name="BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_PAGENAV"></SPAN></td>
</tr>
</table>
</div></td>
</tr>
</table>
</span>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

<span id="BT_SEARCH_RESULTS" name="BT_SEARCH_RESULTS" style="display:none;">

<table name="BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_TABLE" id="BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_TABLE" class="tborder" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="1" border="0" width="100%" align="center" id="threadslist">
<tr>
<td class="tcat" colspan="5" style="font-weight:normal">
<span class="smallfont" style="float:right">
<span class="smallfont"><phrase 1="<SPAN ID=BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_THREADS_START NAME=BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_THREADS_START></SPAN>" 2="<SPAN ID=BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_THREADS_END NAME=BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_THREADS_END></SPAN>" 3="<SPAN ID=BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_THREADS_COUNT NAME=BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_THREADS_COUNT></SPAN>">$vbphrase[showing_results_x_to_y_of_z]</phrase>
</span>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="thead" width="75%">$vbphrase[thread] / $vbphrase[thread_starter]</td>
<td class="thead" width="150" align="center" nowrap="nowrap">$vbphrase[bt_thread_created_on]</td>
<td class="thead" align="center" nowrap="nowrap">$vbphrase[replies]</td>
<td class="thead" align="center" nowrap="nowrap">$vbphrase[views]</td>
</tr>

<!--[BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_TABLE_FILL]-->
</table>

<table id="BT_SEARCH_RESULTS_TEMPLATE" style="display:none">

<tr>
<td class="alt1">
<div>
<a href="[HREF]&amp;highlight=[SEARCH]">[TITLE]</a>
</div>
<div class="smallfont">
<span style="cursor:pointer" onclick="window.open('[AUTHOR_URL]')">[AUTHOR_NAME]</span>
</div>
</td>

<td class="alt2" title="Replies: [REPLIES], Views: [VIEWS]">
<div class="smallfont" style="text-align:right; white-space:nowrap">
<span class="time">[CREATED]</span>
</div>
</td>

<td class="alt1" align="center">[REPLIES]</td>
<td class="alt2" align="center">[VIEWS]</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="alt1 smallfont" colspan=4>[SNIPPET]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="alt2" colspan=4 style="font-size:6px; height:10px"></td>
</tr>
</table>

<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]">
<tr>
<td align="right">
<span id="BT_SEARCH_POWEREDBY" name="BT_SEARCH_POWEREDBY" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</span>


<span id="BT_SEARCH_NORESULTS" name="BT_SEARCH_NORESULTS" style="display:none;">
<br />
<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="70%" align="center">
<tr>
<td class="tcat">vBulletin Message</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="panelsurround" align="center">
<div class="panel">
<div align="left">
<blockquote><p>Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.</p></blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<br />
<br />
</span>


<span id="BT_SEARCH_INPROGRESS" name="BT_SEARCH_INPROGRESS" style="display:none;">
<center>
<br />
<font size="1">
$vbphrase[bt_search_loading_results]<br /><img src="http://www.boardtracker.com/images/dog_hourglass_small.gif" alt ="" />

</font>
<br />
<br />
</center>
</span>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

$footer

<script type="text/javascript">

var Search_SafeFilter = {$vbulletin->options['boardtracker_search_safe_filter']}; //Default
var Search_Category = {$vbulletin->options['boardtracker_search_categoryid']}; //Default
var Search_Order = {$vbulletin->options['boardtracker_search_order']}; //Default
var Search_Scope = {$vbulletin->options['boardtracker_search_scope']}; //Default
var Search_BoardLimit = "{$vbulletin->options['boardtracker_search_boardid']}"; //Default (empty) = All boards. Can chain board IDs using comma (i.e. 25,26,45)
var Search_SearchTerm_Default = "{$vbulletin->options['boardtracker_search_default']}" // Can be set to force default search
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.boardtracker.com/search.js"></script>

</body>
</html>

By the way, it seems that the default BoardTracker Search plugin does not work in Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2 and Opera 9.0 Beta 2. Also, I noticed that the default page navigation does not match the style used by vBulletin.

[BoardTracker]

Which bits need xhtml that you weren't able to do?

Regarding IE7/Opera9 we will look into fixing them if needed when they are out of beta.. maybe the problem is on their side.

[ShiningArcanine]

The HTML validator should be able to point those out to you:

http://validator.w3.org/

[Cloud-Warrior]

Hi all -

Just wanted to tell you all about our experience with this BoardTracker search modification, which has all been good - in fact, better than good. It's brilliant!

We had very high load problems with all the searches that people have been performing on our site, www.boards.ie - Ireland's largest bulletin board community.

Since we installed the BT Search modification, loads have dropped significantly. Also, the mod integrates so well with the site you don't even realise the search results are powered by the BoardTracker facility.

I can't recommend this highly enough. If you find you have speed problems with your vBulletin installation and you suspect it's due to search, give it a go. Feel free to ask any questions on our experiences, I'll do best to answer and I know BoardTracker will too.

All the best,

John.
--

[Sparky_s]

I am also a daily user of boards.ie and know how slow the site was before the boardtracker mod.
Great work.

[Kevlar]

BT koalas scan only new threads :) They don't aimlessly go to the same thread again and again.

What about threads that were created before BT koalas ever existed? We have threads going back to 2001. :surprised: This plugin looks rather interesting, but I'm curious how far back to goes to index the entire forum...

[BoardTracker]

We index all threads right from the start on forums we can access. We basically index all new threads as they are posted to power the persistant search features and have a fresh index while in the background we do a full historical scan to get existing threads which we do gradually and in a smart way to ensure it causes no load issues - on a big board this can take a while but we do eventually get pretty much all the visible threads.

:banana:

[Kevlar]

Is there a way to know when you have indexed all the past posts and are up-to-date?

[BoardTracker]

Is there a way to know when you have indexed all the past posts are are up-to-date?

Yes, just login to your control panel on boardtracker and you will see all the forums listed that we currently index along with number of threads indexed in each as well as total for the board.

In your case I just now added a load of forums that were not previously listed and will start scanning those soon so you will see the counts rising on those.

[Kevlar]

Well I enabled it for the basic search but I left the advanced search active for the time being. I did notice one drawback tho, with BT you are unable to seach specific forums (or did I miss that option)... so it may require keeping the vB advanced search active.

I hope your BT koalas index fast... cause my members will be asking what happened to all our history soon.

[ferrarislave]

Boardtracker, I run a single board, I want to signup for your service; however, I don't see how I can benefit from the mod seeing that vbulletin already does a great job of finding things that our members look for... Sorry to sound ignorant, or otherwise mis-informed, but I don't quite understand the need for this mod if your running a single forum.

[BoardTracker]

Boardtracker, I run a single board, I want to signup for your service; however, I don't see how I can benefit from the mod seeing that vbulletin already does a great job of finding things that our members look for... Sorry to sound ignorant, or otherwise mis-informed, but I don't quite understand the need for this mod if your running a single forum.
Hi ferrarislave
First of all, glad to see you submitted your board into BoardTracker and will soon enjoy being searchable on BoardTracker and found by users of BoardTracker even if you don't use the search mod.

As for the search mod..
Your board has 3300 threads. At that size, the internal search mechanism can still handle that without significant impact on the speed/responsiveness of the board.
However, as your board grows, you will see it getting slower and slower, since the internal search mechanism is not well designed for search, a thing which causes heavy load on the Database server/s and eventually similar or even higher loads on the web servers, which is why you will see many board with search disabled. By the way, this is not VB specific issue. All board software suffer from this. A proper search requires a system built from the ground up to do search and that is what BoardTracker does and even more specifically it is designed and built for searching boards.

And at the same time, the results will start being less relevant, for the same reason - The built in search is not fully suitable for searching in large quantities of data/text.

When you get to that stage, you will most probably see the need for a better search. BoardTracker search mod can answer that need.

To see the performance problem issue and some of it's roots, have a look at https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=119263

To see the relevancy problem itself, try this..
Search this board for -< searching large forums >- and order it by relevancy. Do you find the above thread at all? (note: it's titled "How did you solve searching in large forums?").
Now try searching BoardTracker for the same thing: searching large forums (http://www.boardtracker.com/search/?search=searching+large+forums&page=1&cat=0&order=1&scope=4&sitelimit=vbulletin.org&boardid=&for=0)
Notice that even without a site limit, the relevant thread comes up among the very first results:
searching large forums (http://www.boardtracker.com/search/?search=searching+large+forums&page=1&cat=0&order=1&scope=4&sitelimit=&boardid=&for=0)
What's more, BoardTracker allows you to use stemming. that means that even if you search for search large forum (http://www.boardtracker.com/search/?search=search+large+forum&page=1&cat=0&order=1&scope=4&sitelimit=vbulletin.org&boardid=&for=0) instead of searching large forums, it will still find the thread.

You can judge the mod maybe by seeing boards.ie's experience, rpg.net's and others. Hopefully we will see some feedback from BimmerForums.com soon if they disable the advanced search and see the full effect of migrating to the search mod on their servers.

I hope it clears things up. Let us know what you think.

[Firestar.chkn]

Any idea when a version for vBulletin 3.6 will be available?

[BoardTracker]

Any idea when a version for vBulletin 3.6 will be available?
Right after it is officially released

[heathriel]

I submitted my board weeks ago and still haven't received instructions - http://www.plundertheport.com/forums

Can you please look into this? We're about to go live. Thanks!

[BoardTracker]

I submitted my board weeks ago and still haven't received instructions - http://www.plundertheport.com/forums

Can you please look into this? We're about to go live. Thanks!
Your forum is not accessible... Trying to access it, we get a request to fill in user/password (.htaccess style). can others confirm?
I think we have emailed you about it. Andway, keep us updated.

[punk23]

Yup, same here :(

[heathriel]

It should be available now - legal issues kept us from being open until now.

I haven't received any email, though. heather at floodg dot com ?

[BoardTracker]

It should be available now - legal issues kept us from being open until now.

I haven't received any email, though. heather at floodg dot com ?

Ok I see it now, we'll get that added soon.

[ShannonA]

When will the 3.6 version be available?

[BoardTracker]

When will the 3.6 version be available?

In the next few days. We are currently working on v2 of this mod which has quite a few new features so once thats done we will release it for vb 3.5 and 3.6

[ShannonA]

Great. Thanks for the heads up.

[BoardTracker]

We just released version 2 of this mod here for vb3.5 and also for vb3.6 here..

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=123862

Lots of new features to play with!

:cool:

[gorman]

How can I have the advanced searching options shown by default?

[BoardTracker]

How can I have the advanced searching options shown by default?
We have just added this capability..
On the advanced link add ?adv=1
So the URL should be /searchbt.php?adv=1
That way, when people click that link, they will be taken to the search page which will soon after, open the advanced search pane automatically.

Also, you can now link the "Search this forum" by changing the URL to
/searchbt.php?adv=1&frm=%ForumID% (replace %ForumID% with your forum ID of course).
Or alternatively (in the little search forum there) add a
<input type=hidden name="frm" value="%ForumID%"/>

Give it a try and let me know how it worked out for you.

[gorman]

We have just added this capability..
On the advanced link add ?adv=1
So the URL should be /searchbt.php?adv=1
That way, when people click that link, they will be taken to the search page which will soon after, open the advanced search pane automatically.I'm not sure I get what you mean.
In the navbar template I have this:<!-- NAVBAR POPUP MENUS -->

<if condition="$show['searchbuttons']">
<!-- header quick search form -->
<div class="vbmenu_popup" id="navbar_search_menu" style="display:none">
<table cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" border="0">
<tr>
<td class="thead">$vbphrase[search_forums]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="vbmenu_option" title="nohilite">
<if condition="$vboptions['boardtracker_search_active']">
<form action="searchbt.php" method="get">
<input type="text" class="bginput" name="search" size="20" />&nbsp;$gobutton<br />
<else />
<form action="search.php" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="do" value="process" />
<input type="hidden" name="showposts" value="0" />
<input type="hidden" name="quicksearch" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="s" value="$session[sessionhash]" />
<input type="text" class="bginput" name="query" size="20" />&nbsp;$gobutton<br />
</if>
</form>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="search.php$session[sessionurl_q]" accesskey="4" rel="nofollow">$vbphrase[advanced_search]</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
<!-- / header quick search form -->The reference to searchbt.php is not under the advanced search link... Note that I, as admin, keep the privilege of searching using the regular search (don't know if this changes something, can't see why, as it's dynamic and not in templates but still...).

[BoardTracker]

Actually if you are using the dynamic method rather than just hardcoding the advanced search link in the template then you just need to edit the url in the "Restrict vbsearch to certain usergroups" plugin. Just open that and change this line..

header("Location: http://$bt_host$bt_uri/searchbt.php");

to this..

header("Location: http://$bt_host$bt_uri/searchbt.php?adv=1");

[gorman]

Ok, now it works. Thanks!

[Ski-Whiz]

I just installed this, and don't seem to see the search difference...

I did the navbar edit, but I'm still getting the normal search, and I have it active in VB Options.

Now I want ONLY show my board/site. I assume I need to wait for my site to be indexed before I can get a Board ID? Also, I assume the sites are indexed by spiders? I saw mention of a "BoardTracker" user, but I don't have one..

I'm kind of lost alittle.. I did submit my site, so hopefully this becomes clearer once it gets added.

[BoardTracker]

Make sure you updated all instances of the search form html.

You'll get a board id as soon as we process it, before it is indexed. An email with instructions will be sent when that happens.

[gorman]

Do you think you could add this use to the plugin?

http://www.boardtracker.com/cgi-bin/display_member.pl?board=$BOARD_ID&member=$USER_ID

For the moment I've used this:

BOARD_URL/searchbt.php?search=&order=0&user=$username&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1

The problem is that in this way, if a user uses strange characters in their name, the search does not work properly.

[BoardTracker]

Do you think you could add this use to the plugin?

http://www.boardtracker.com/cgi-bin/display_member.pl?board=$BOARD_ID&member=$USER_ID

For the moment I've used this:

BOARD_URL/searchbt.php?search=&order=0&user=$username&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1

The problem is that in this way, if a user uses strange characters in their name, the search does not work properly.

You want to be able to do search user threads by userid instead of username to put in the links on the profile page? Can you give me an example of a username with strange characters that doesn't work?

[gorman]

You want to be able to do search user threads by userid instead of username to put in the links on the profile page? Can you give me an example of a username with strange characters that doesn't work?Yup, here you go: http://forumgamesradar.futuregamer.it/showthread.php?p=10871873#post10871873

Check this user, clicking on his profile and selecting "Trova altri messaggi di ? Constantine ?". That's the "find other messages by" function...

[BoardTracker]

Yup, here you go: http://forumgamesradar.futuregamer.it/showthread.php?p=10871873#post10871873

Check this user, clicking on his profile and selecting "Trova altri messaggi di ? Constantine ?". That's the "find other messages by" function...

Ok now you can use 'userid=12345' instead of 'user=name' in the links, like so..

searchbt.php?userid=52671

Thats only for the direct links to get all threads by a user, not for the search form which needs the username.

[gorman]

Cool! Now it works perfectly. :)

It seems to have problems with accented characters in thread titles. It substitutes accented characters with ?

[BoardTracker]

Cool! Now it works perfectly. :)

It seems to have problems with accented characters in thread titles. It substitutes accented characters with ?
It should be working properly now.
Please confirm :)

[BoardTracker]

Make sure to also check out our very cool thread tagging and tag search system for vb3.5 here (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=111887)!

It allows your members to tag threads and provides a fully integrated search engine - similar in appearance to this mod - which also shows a tag cloud and related tags and provides advanced seach options.

Tag links can use mod_rewrite or standard links and there's lots of options to play with in the control panel. Your tag cloud can easily be put on any page you want - even on other sites!

Tags are stored locally in your db as well as indexed by boardtracker and again all the heavy work of searching is handled by our servers!

[gorman]

It should be working properly now.
Please confirm :)Nope, it doesn't.

Check this link, there are two problems:

http://forumgamesradar.futuregamer.it/searchbt.php?search=&order=0&userid=52671&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1

First problem is all accented characters are shown with strange characters. I hope you can recognize them, if not just let me know and I'll do a screengrab for you.

Second problem concerns the multipage links. By using this format:
http://forumgamesradar.futuregamer.it/searchbt.php?search=&&user=†%20Constantine%20†&&frm=-1&&relfrms=0&&cat=1&page=2&order=0&scope=4

And so reverting to the username and not the userid, they invalidate your fix for all pages save the first.

[BoardTracker]

Nope, it doesn't.

Check this link, there are two problems:

http://forumgamesradar.futuregamer.it/searchbt.php?search=&order=0&userid=52671&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1

First problem is all accented characters are shown with strange characters. I hope you can recognize them, if not just let me know and I'll do a screengrab for you.

Second problem concerns the multipage links. By using this format:
http://forumgamesradar.futuregamer.it/searchbt.php?search=&&user=?‚?†%20Constantine%20?‚?†&&frm=-1&&relfrms=0&&cat=1&page=2&order=0&scope=4

And so reverting to the username and not the userid, they invalidate your fix for all pages save the first.
First problem was fixed yesterday.
Try to refresh your browser's cache (or at least delete search-v2.js from your cache). It should solve the accented characters problem. Let me know if not.

Second problem was just fixed. Please confirm.


Edit:
Checking again, we notice a problem in IE. Will update about a fix soon...

Edit#2:
Still see a problem. Will keep you posted when it's resolved.
The problem is formatting the data into your local charset instead of UTF which BoardTracker works in.

[BoardTracker]

Ok .... Problem fixed.

Full conversion into destination charset is in place.

Also, the page navigator for users with accented characters was fixed.

Please confirm :)

[ryancooper]

DB error
Error: Table 'BoardTracker_SUN.BOARDS_SUBMISSION' doesn't exist
From: /cgi-bin/manage/submit_process.pl

Got this error when trying to submit my site to boardtracker...