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Search function overhaul

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I know Jay and anyone else who programs for this site is busy with many things...but this is something that has been a bit bothersome for at least four or five years now. And that is, the search function basically doesn't work. The forums are unsearchable. It's almost impossible to track down information easily. Would it be too much to ask for a search engine that actually works? Doesn't Google provide a plug-in of sorts that can reference a particular site? It's one of the only complaints I have about this board. The search engine is absolute garbage and should have been completely re-built years ago. Is there any hope of this being changed or do we basically have to make do with what exists? It's not like it is impossible to find things, it's just that it is often so much of a pain that I give up. I know I'm not the first person to mention this. The site has so much information--really, this place is one of Star Wars fandom's biggest goldmine's--but much of it is essentially lost due to a virtually unusable search function. It would benefit a lot of people if this could be revised somehow. Just a suggestion. :)

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most search engines:

site:originaltrilogy.com Search Query

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I can't argue with you. I threw the search function together pretty hastily because the launch of the software happened ahead of schedule. (There was a mishap while testing the current software that made it impossible to go back to the original software, so the launch was performed much sooner than planned.) It's slow, there's no way to filter the results, and SQL Server's full text search algorithms simply don't compare to Google's.

none's suggestion is the best one at the moment. Search will be overhauled in the next upgrade.

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MTFBWY…A

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Does the future search results have a display method at this point?  Will it be similar to what's currently happening where it shows a series of full posts, or will it be more like a search engine result, the 100 or so words around the found query?

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It's still in the design phase. For starters, there will be a proper advanced search with more filtering options (by post author, for example). Results won't be a massive dump of entire posts like it is now. It'll be far more usable--not hard given the current state of things.

I know how horrible the results are, trust me :)

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MTFBWY…A

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Jay said:

It's still in the design phase. For starters, there will be a proper advanced search with more filtering options (by post author, for example). Results won't be a massive dump of entire posts like it is now. It'll be far more usable--not hard given the current state of things.

I know how horrible the results are, trust me :)

It's probably too much to ask, but can you include a means to search within search results? Something similar to piping the output of an invocation of grep into another invocation of grep.

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AntcuFaalb said:

Jay said:

It's still in the design phase. For starters, there will be a proper advanced search with more filtering options (by post author, for example). Results won't be a massive dump of entire posts like it is now. It'll be far more usable--not hard given the current state of things.

I know how horrible the results are, trust me :)

It's probably too much to ask, but can you include a means to search within search results? Something similar to piping the output of an invocation of grep into another invocation of grep.

One step at a time, please. First we need a search function that is actually usable.

Then, they can make it overly complicated.

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