Search Problem

[CarolSEL]

Originally Posted by Lynne

It's really not a good idea to hijack someone else's thread.

Sorry Lynne, I didn?t realize that a similar problem needed another thread, so I?ve copied the informatoin to a new one. Please delete the others if they are a problem.

My original post: Search function on our system (4.0.6) is a nightmare! Search from the ACP, as well as from the widgets fails to return correct post counts, etc. The best option is to go to Advanced Search, select "Search Single Content Type" for Posts and enter criteria. But the results still do not come close to the parameters.

For example, I will search for my own posts for the past two days, knowing I've posted, say 10. I might get back 3. If I add keywords, sometimes I get 0, sometimes not. Plus, the search takes forever.

We're on PHP 5.2.14, MySQL 5.0.92 community, cPanelPro 1.1 (RC1)
(We had vB do the install, and the tech assured us versions were fine.)

Our Mods go nuts trying to find results. We put newbies under moderation for a few posts to make sure they aren't spammers or trolls. Some stay longer than 2 or 3 posts, if content is questionable, so I historically use the APC to find posts. But that's been a genuine pain since we upgraded, and our Mods are really complaining about it. We get a lot of surfers who come specifically to find information, and my "contact us" feedback gets complaints that the search is worthless.

Any ideas why or what to look for?

Originally Posted by Lynne

Do you have search indexing turned on for all forums - forum manager > forum > Index New Posts in Search Engine> Yes. If that was set to no and you change it to Yes, you must then Rebuild the search indexes in maintenance > update counters > Rebuild search index.

Yes, the forums are all set to ?yes? for Index New Posts. I?ve also rebuilt the search index. Also, after reading your reply I also ran some diags at ACP. A long list of files "not recognized as part of vBulletin" came up in Suspect Files. About half seem to be upgrade files. I?ll add this, not knowing if it may be related to the problem:

Before upgrading from 2.6 to 4.0.6 we were having some serious issues, cause of which was never identified. The site slowed terribly and eventually crashed. The owners, who are substantially MIA, finally renewed the license and upgraded, and had vB do the upgrade. Prior to the upgrade, I pruned the db of very old material, soft deletes, banned users with no posts, etc; then reindexed counters, indices, etc. The installing tech thought that was sufficient, and tested the db as OK.

There have been a few small ?glitches? since upgrading.

-One notable is the ?Notifications? widget ? it continuously shows 3 threads in moderation when there are none (and none show at the ACP.)

- The second is the search feature, as noted above.

- The third is an intermittent slowdown of the dedserv, where it shows memory (2 Gb) and dual CPU maxed, even with low traffic (4 members, 35 guests ? mostly bots) and no processes run from either ACP or cPanel. It will take up to 2 minutes for a post to load or to logon. Host cannot find a problem. The vB Manual doesn?t give me any clues.

I don?t know if any of these are related, but if I can at least get one resolved, we?ll be making progress!

(I?ll add that as ?Forum Admin?, my job has historically been simply to manage posts and users, so I?m not well versed in software. But the absence of owners means someone needs to maintain the site.) Before entering a support ticket, I wanted to find out if the search feature, etc., has been resolved for others.

Thanks for your patience, and any assistance (or direction to same!) you can provide.

[Lynne]

There is no Notifications widget, so I'm not sure what to tell you there.

Have you looked in the database to see how many rows are in the searchcore* tables? If you have all forums set to be indexed, you should have at least as many rows in there as you have rows in your post table. If you don't, then my guess would be that when you rebuilt the search index, it timed out and didn't finish.

If you are in control of your server (can make configuration changes), then I would suggest posting in the server configuration forum on vbulletin.com for help configuring your server.

[CarolSEL]

Originally Posted by Lynne

There is no Notifications widget, so I'm not sure what to tell you there.

Have you looked in the database to see how many rows are in the searchcore* tables? If you have all forums set to be indexed, you should have at least as many rows in there as you have rows in your post table. If you don't, then my guess would be that when you rebuilt the search index, it timed out and didn't finish.

If you are in control of your server (can make configuration changes), then I would suggest posting in the server configuration forum on vbulletin.com for help configuring your server.

Thanks, Lynne - will do.