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Let Google Index XYforum.
Posted: 29 Aug 2010 13:52
by SkyFrontier
-due to limitations on forum's own search engine; we could circumvent this severe problem using Google search function "site:", for instance.
-widening visibility of several tools and solutions, some of them only found here - or having a far better implementation than any other currently available in the market.
-no hassle to implement it nor money required to spend.
-why not?
Re: Let Google Index XYforum.
Posted: 29 Aug 2010 14:07
by nas8e9
SkyFrontier wrote:-due to limitations on forum's own search engine; we could circumvent this severe problem using Google search function "site:", for instance.
-widening visibility of several tools and solutions, some of them only found here - or having a far better implementation than any other currently available in the market.
-no hassle to implement it nor money required to spend.
-why not?
I gather from the StackOverflow people that Google's spider takes a lot of bandwidth. Also. the stuff forum users see is coming straight out of a database; having PHP + MySQL produce the entire forum content can't be cheap CPU- and IO-wise.
The former depends on the arrangement Don has regarding bandwidth; some forums offer a low-bandwidth option to search engines. The latter would require a beefier server.
In the end I suspect the Google option would be rather more expensive than the current arrangement.
Re: Let Google Index XYforum.
Posted: 29 Aug 2010 15:24
by zer0
I'm still curious to know why the forum's search doesn't pick up text in code tags. There has to be a way...
Re: Let Google Index XYforum.
Posted: 29 Aug 2010 15:35
by j_c_hallgren
zer0 wrote:I'm still curious to know why the forum's search doesn't pick up text in code tags. There has to be a way...
I don't have time now but maybe check th phpBB forums for ideas?
Re: Let Google Index XYforum.
Posted: 29 Aug 2010 15:49
by SkyFrontier
zer0:
I'm still curious to know why the forum's search doesn't pick up text in code tags. There has to be a way...
...not to mention the "common words" limitation that annoys me a lot ("time" being a common word on a file management software forum...? I'm aware XY saves time, but it doesn't seem to me that users explicitly went here to chat about XY's time saving abilities... It's probably a built-in generic, dumb blacklist) ... I understand the principles and reasons, but it doesn't offers me a reasonable explanation from the usability point of view...
Re: Let Google Index XYforum.
Posted: 29 Aug 2010 15:58
by zer0
j_c_hallgren wrote:I don't have time now but maybe check th phpBB forums for ideas?
Yep, I will do some digging. There may, however, be some potential performance issues as the search index would grow significantly.
SkyFrontier wrote:...not to mention the "common words" limitation that annoys me a lot ("time" being a common word on a file management software forum...? I'm aware XY saves time, but it doesn't seem to me that users explicitly went here to chat about XY's time saving abilities... It's probably a built-in generic, dumb blacklist) ... I understand the principles and reasons, but it doesn't offers me a reasonable explanation from the usability point of view...
That should be modifiable via /language/lang_english/search_stopwords.txt
Re: Let Google Index XYforum.
Posted: 29 Aug 2010 16:04
by SkyFrontier
zer0:
That should be modifiable via /language/lang_english/search_stopwords.txt
-there's a hope, so...
Thanks for the tip. Don's turn - when Don turns back.
Re: Let Google Index XYforum.
Posted: 29 Aug 2010 16:29
by zer0
SkyFrontier wrote:zer0:
That should be modifiable via /language/lang_english/search_stopwords.txt
-there's a hope, so...
Thanks for the tip. Don's turn - when Don turns back.
Stopwords is phpBB2's feature. In phpBB3, it better:
Common word threshold: Like phpBB2's stopwords feature, you can prevent the use of common words that you specify. However, this feature is expanded upon in phpBB3. You can now control the threshold that a word can have; this means that if a word is contained in more than a certain percentage of posts on your board, it will be deemed as a common word, and will be ignored in search queries. All positive integers are valid values, and represent the percentage of posts on your board words can be contained in. If you would like to disable this threshold and thereby allow searches using all words, even if they can be common, set this value to "0". This setting only applies if your board has more than 100 posts.
Re: Let Google Index XYforum.
Posted: 29 Aug 2010 16:41
by SkyFrontier
zer0:
Stopwords is phpBB2's feature.
Yeah, I've guessed.
Admin-defineable, right?
Or is the "search_stopwords.txt" hardcoded anywhere else other than Admin's domain?
Thanks for the tip on phpBB3. ^^