Using the forum lately

[Raman]

I have noticed that I do not get correct search results when using the forum. Lets say I wanted to search for a word...'Gaia" I was trying to find the thread to respond to Steve's post and honestly I could not find post by authors names (Steve and others), name in post...even latest posts did not seem accurate as mine's, for example did not show up...(Or others)... It took me a long time and I finally found it but it seems because there were 2 new posts...Seem some database tables are corrupted or something? Hope is not just me...

I tried other browsers as well.

[Bring4th_Steve]

Hey, Raman!

Sorry to hear about the search trouble... The forums use full-text indexing, which means it will search on any word that is greater than 3 characters.

I tried to do a search on "Gaia" and "Steve", and in all cases I found posts that included my name in them.

One of the questions I have for you is, did you click the "posts" radio button under the bottom-right section called "display options"? By default it gives you back the thread that your search term appears in. That is only helpful up to a point, so if you click on "posts", it will instead give you the exact posts that your search term is found in.

Also, if you are using the "Search by Username" option and putting in "Steve", for instance, be sure to uncheck the "match exact user name", since my username also includes "Bring4th_".

Otherwise, I can find all of your posts and any term I can think of. Browser type won't matter, since we are talking about a database inside the forums.

Let me know if you might have overlooked that small detail.
Steve

[Raman]

Hey, Raman!

Sorry to hear about the search trouble... The forums use full-text indexing, which means it will search on any word that is greater than 3 characters.

I tried to do a search on "Gaia" and "Steve", and in all cases I found posts that included my name in them.

One of the questions I have for you is, did you click the "posts" radio button under the bottom-right section called "display options"? By default it gives you back the thread that your search term appears in. That is only helpful up to a point, so if you click on "posts", it will instead give you the exact posts that your search term is found in.

Also, if you are using the "Search by Username" option and putting in "Steve", for instance, be sure to uncheck the "match exact user name", since my username also includes "Bring4th_".

Otherwise, I can find all of your posts and any term I can think of. Browser type won't matter, since we are talking about a database inside the forums.

Let me know if you might have overlooked that small detail.
Steve

I mentioned the browsers due to the cache aspect on them. I know you probable use a sql (possibly mysql or equivalent) in this php based forum so I understand database is part (included/linked) of the forum per se.

I understand about names, etc...No, I am doing the search queries correctly.

For example I search Raman's post just before this post:

Forum Replies Views Last Post [asc]
 
Higher selves
Raman
Strictly Law of One 16 140 Today 10:37 AM
Last Post: 3DMonkey
 
Nibiru and Identity Theft ( 1 2 3 )
Azrael
The Harvest 46 827 Today 02:47 AM
Last Post: sticker_ninja
 
Using the forum lately
Raman
Olio 1 28 Today 02:35 AM
Last Post: Bring4th_Steve

Poetry ( 1 2 3 4 ... last )
haqiqu
Olio 278 7,039 Today 12:32 AM
Last Post: norral
 
Saga of Polarity ( 1 2 3 4 )
Azrael
Strictly Law of One 62 489 Yesterday 02:28 PM
Last Post: Bring4th_Steve

Inspirational Music Share ( 1 2 )
Namaste
Life on Planet Earth 39 1,993 Yesterday 05:58 AM
Last Post: oguz

The Treehuggers' Treehouse ( 1 2 3 4 ... last )

Only 5 firsts post or so showing to improve readability...I only posted on Higher Selves and this thread....Also look at dates.

The other ones are wrong...And I clicked "exact user name" just in case, as well.

[Bring4th_Steve]

Hmm.. That is quite unusual. There's no browser caching that you'd have to worry about since the search queries are dynamic and the page headers tell the browser to "not cache".

Yet, if I type in "Raman" into the Search box and click "Show Posts" instead of "Threads", I get this, which shows your name appearing in every single post: (image is also attached to this message)


  2ram.jpg (Size: 300.7 KB / Downloads: 6)

If you continue having problems, let's discuss through Private Messages.

Thanks,
Steve

[Raman]

Steve, it could be database tables corruption. Could you check/repair the tables? Like zenmaster I upgraded my password just in case and when I did this, search results seemingly were correct, so it did somewhat "fixed" that aspect...or so it appears.

[Bring4th_Steve]

Steve, it could be database tables corruption. Could you check/repair the tables? Like zenmaster I upgraded my password just in case and when I did this, search results seemingly were correct, so it did somewhat "fixed" that aspect...or so it appears.

Raman, that is good advice. The thing is that I am already doing it once an hour, every day of the week. The forums have a task manager that will run "jobs" to check & repair broken tables.

The only thing I can think of was that you experienced a table that was not updated within that hour period. The chances are very small since I rarely receive reports of broken tables, but anything is possible. The other possibility is that old data was cached, and the cache was not yet updated during the time you made the queries.

If you don't mind, let's watch for it to happen again. There's plans to upgrade the forums in the near future, too, so if this is a problem I can't fix, it's very possible the next version of the forums will handle the tables differently (since the newest version of the forums is a complete code overhaul).

Thanks for keeping me in the loop about this...
Steve

[AnthroHeart]

Steve, I found with IE9 it has a tendency to double post.
To get around this, I clicked on enable compatibility mode. The icon in the URL bar next to the refresh.

[Raman]

Steve, it could be database tables corruption. Could you check/repair the tables? Like zenmaster I upgraded my password just in case and when I did this, search results seemingly were correct, so it did somewhat "fixed" that aspect...or so it appears.

Raman, that is good advice. The thing is that I am already doing it once an hour, every day of the week. The forums have a task manager that will run "jobs" to check & repair broken tables.

The only thing I can think of was that you experienced a table that was not updated within that hour period. The chances are very small since I rarely receive reports of broken tables, but anything is possible. The other possibility is that old data was cached, and the cache was not yet updated during the time you made the queries.

If you don't mind, let's watch for it to happen again. There's plans to upgrade the forums in the near future, too, so if this is a problem I can't fix, it's very possible the next version of the forums will handle the tables differently (since the newest version of the forums is a complete code overhaul).

Thanks for keeping me in the loop about this...
Steve

Would be a good idea to implement https login. Certificates can be free or very cheap.
Also if you use apache webserver it can be hardened very nicely against php based attacks.

[Bring4th_Steve]

yeah, HTTPS seems to be becoming more commonplace for non-sensitive information. We simply don't have any sensitive data on our servers, and the passwords are MD5 hashed and salted, so the only realistic way to gain access to Bring4th would be to sniff network packets. And that's assuming a hacker is lucky enough to hit someone using a standard WEP key instead of WPA, whereby they can hack the wi-fi connection to even begin eavesdropping on packets.

So we all weighed this out in 2008 and decided that there's no real value in making the entire site secure.

Long story short, we'll probably look into using a site-wide cert for the next Bring4th version, with a separate cert for the store, since L/L likes the idea of using store.bring4th.org, meaning one cert can't cover two different domain names.

These are all good opinions, and you all are helping me to validate a lot of what is on deck for the upcoming development.

Thanks for all the input!
Steve