search function

[giner]

Hi Richard,

Would it be possible to seach phrases in messages by entering the required phrase in quotes? As it stands, when entering a phrase the search engine pulls out individual words in the phrase.

Also, when hitting the 'back' arrow after initiating a search, why doesn't the search page reappear, rather than getting the 'page expired' message? Can this be amended?

Thanks for the great work you do in maintaining this fun, informative and useful forum.

Best regards,
Giner

[richard]

The short answer at the moment is that there's not much to fix these search issues.

Yes I have the forum source code, but I didn't write it, and it would be a huge job to undertake anything but the simplest changes.

The forums are currently running phpBB 2 (patched). 3 has been released but I'm waiting a little while in case there are any problems. There are bound to be problems when I change, and we will almost certainly lose all the attachments. On the positive side, the new version is meant to be quite a bit better (perhaps the search will work better?), and things like attachments and anti-spam measures will be integrated. At the moment I'm using a third party add-on for attachments (hence it could be better!), and a home-brew anti-spam implementation. The latter actually works pretty well, probably because it is unique.

Richard

[giner]

Hi Richard,

Once you got into the technospeak there, I'm afraid you lost me. But hopefully the search improvements will come to fruition before too long. Thanks again for your efforts.

[richard]

There's a major upgrade of the software available. It has a lot of improvements and hopefully search is one of the improved areas. The BIG downside is that we will probably lose all the attachments.

The upgrade is such a big one that I'm waiting before applying it. Probably 3-12 month time frame.

Richard