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[punBB] ditch search_id=xxxxxx


splintax

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Hey all,

Just wondering if anyone thinks it would be a good idea to ditch punBB's "search_id=XXXXXX" thing in the URL?

For those of you who don't know what I mean, when you search in punBB, you are redirected to search.php?search_id=XXXXXX. You can't link this URL in the forums, so you have to manually make up a URL using search.php?action=search&keywords=stuff.

I'm not sure why this feature exists....

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It's extremely fast though... the problem with it is that it searches exact terms, and you have to use wildcards to search things like... search and searches (the term being "search*"). I think other forum softwares automatically search for both when you type the base word. I'm not sure though. Either way, I sorta like PunBB's search -- for my needs, it's fairly accurate, if I can remember keywords.

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if I can remember keywords

The problem starts though with new users in the forum who are instructed to use the search before posting. They don't know any keywords, and at many times seem to miss previous posts about essentially the same thing and make dupes.

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Google barely makes it any easier -- they still have to know at least a word similar to what's actually there. Like... "dog" will also find "dogs." Also, Google doesn't necessarily find something about dogs when you search "animals," even though that's a related word. In that sense, Google search is only marginally better than PunBB's search. For ANY search engine, it's all about the keywords.

Aside from that, searching doesn't necessarily mean "searching" literally, but also looking around first. I know people aren't going to look through all 50 pages of Feature Requests to make sure their feature wasn't already requested already, but at least take a look at the latest ones. Just yesterday, I saw 3 dupe threads, all of which had answers given within a day or so in other threads about the same topic.

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Indeed, which leaves the default as the winner, since it has access to everything in the database, and allows criteria searching. Lightning quick as well. It takes a little more work, but anyone who knows how to search would know that it doesn't always take one try at a keyword to find what you want -- if you really try, then you end up searching with different keywords, whether it be different words, or a modification of a previously searched keyword.

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The search_id thing is for search caching, so I don't think we want to remove it... It'd only add extra strain on the server.

I'm aware of that, however, I'm not sure how significant the extra strain would be, considering that the search_id= URLs seem to be consistently dead...

But then it doesn't have the flexibilities that an internal search engine might have... like sorting by a criteria, or searching by author, etc.

Precisely. Google search is nowhere near as good. Also, Google search is only up-to-date when Googlebot recrawls the forums. PunBB search is realtime.

Not possible to remove due to the design of the search system in punbb.

I don't see why not. I'm sure I can work it out if I give it some time.

Firon: I have got a copy of punBB that I've mucked around with a little, I'll see if I can do it.

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Not possible to remove due to the design of the search system in punbb.

I don't see why not. I'm sure I can work it out if I give it some time.

Firon: I have got a copy of punBB that I've mucked around with a little' date=' I'll see if I can do it.[/quote']

Since Rickard, the guy who coded PunBB, said that he doesnt know how to get around it at the moment. This has already been discussed on the PunBB forums.

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