Search Feature Does Not Work At All

[Hot Ptah]

I wanted to find where a particular favorite track was located in an old Blindfold Test, so I searched for it, and the Search feature came up with no results. I then typed in several very famous, often mentioned jazz musicians' names into the Search function, asking it to search in the Blindfold Test forum, and there were no results for any of them. I remember that we have had several songs by each artist in past Blindfold Tests.

Next I typed the same famous jazz musicians' names into the overall Search for the entire site, and only came up with three to five "hits" for each, going back to 2003. That is impossible. Each has been mentioned hundreds of times on this board.

I just read an old thread on problems with the Search feature, and there was a suggestion to type into Google, site:organissimo.org (and then your search terms). Doing that with one of the names brought up hundreds of "hits", while the Search feature here had produced three "hits" since 2003.

Is there anything that can be done?

Edited February 9, 2016 by Hot Ptah

[JSngry]

Going to Google by default seems to be the best option.

Example: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=pops+poopadeaux+site:organissimo.org&start=0

I really do not even attempt to use the board search function now, ever. I act like it's not an option, like it's not even there at all, because in its current state of defuntionality (not even dysfunctionality - defunctionality), it's not.

[Hot Ptah]

Thanks Jim. That puts it into perspective. I have just used the Google idea for several searches and that seems to work well.

[Niko]

it hasn't worked half-properly for a long time, but since one of the last updates, it's truly silly... for instance, google turns up seven threads with Ellery Eskelin's name in the title (and many more mentions)

the search function (for "eskelin") finds none of these threads, and merely 12 posts mentioning the name, some of them as old as 2005...  only one of these is reasonably interesting ... (the other 11 are: 3 posts in the "For Sale" forum, 6 in "Name 3 people" , one (!) in "What are you listening..." and my mention of him in the Mitchell/Red thread yesterday)

similarly, it doesn't find any of the over 20 threads with Fred Anderson's name in the title...similar picture for Gerald Wilson...

 

imho, especially thinking of newbies, it might make sense to simply remove the search function, since it gives a highly misleading impression of the wealth of information we "have" here...

 

[Jim Alfredson]

There has been a lot of discussion about this over at the Invision community forums. One problem is that MySQL, the database system upon which this forum is built (and most other forum software) is notoriously bad when it comes to searching data. Invision has attempted some other solutions in the past but none have been satisfactory.

It seems there is a plug-in I can add that acts as an addendum to the current search function using Google. It supposedly works quite well however it is very broad, throws up individual pages, and only displays topics in the results, not individual posts.

https://community.invisionpower.com/files/file/7866-dp41-cse-google/

The search problems may also be related to or compounded by the fact that the server is not running the latest version of MySQL or PHP. I will ask my host about upgrading those.

[Niko]

as I said, I'd just delete the search function, maybe replace it with a link to google (provided the software is flexible enough)

[Tom 1960]

It's a shame the search function no longer works. In the past I have found it to be a invaluable tool to search out artists which were new to me. Instead as others have already indicated, I use Google which seems to work.

[Hot Ptah]

I tend to agree that the Search function should be completely disabled, and when anyone tries to use it, they should receive a message directing them on how to use Google for searches instead.

As far as I can tell, the Search function is so badly broken that it is unlikely that it can be corrected.

[Niko]

For the moment, this seems to be the only reasonable fix and I believe it would help many users if it was implemented. That said: while the accumulated information in our database is a big mess, google covers the whole internet which is a gigantic mess. It thus has to be efficient - and it does miss quite a few things. For this reason, a decent search function for the forum would desirable - it can't be THAT hard to search all we have here. When google is better than the local search function, this is like the super market stocking more jazz albums than a "brick and mortar" shop specialized on jazz. Given that "we" actually pay for this software ... hmmm

Edited February 11, 2016 by Niko

[ghost of miles]

On 2/10/2016 at 4:23 PM, Tom 1960 said:

It's a shame the search function no longer works. In the past I have found it to be a invaluable tool to search out artists which were new to me. Instead as others have already indicated, I use Google which seems to work.

Same here.  It also drives me crazy when updated/"upgraded" systems dispense, for whatever reason, with functions that used to work quite well.