[Jase2]

Anyone answer my previous question ?

[ivanp]

Originally Posted by Jase2

Anyone answer my previous question ?

We are using Sphinx to replace slow vBulletin internal & fulltext search.

[TechGuy]

Has any progress been made on getting the advanced search options working?

[Jase2]

So, it replaces the default vBulletin search ?

[Deriel]

Originally Posted by Jase2

So, it replaces the default vBulletin search ?

Yes, exactly.

Somewhere, above 1 million posts, the vB search and the Fulltext search became both too slow, too server intensive. Solution: Sphinx.

[Jah-Hools]

Originally Posted by Spinball

I echo what you guys say. Sphinx saved our board without getting at least one more server - maybe two. Disappointing that integrating it isn't high on the vB team's priority list.

Wotcher Spinbal,

A quick question if I may.

I see you are using Google Custom search on your site..

So are you using Sphinx just for the VB Forum search?

Are most members using Google Custom as the default search? And only some using the VB search?

Thanks M8,

See - at 2 million posts search speed isnt a problem for me (so far) - what IS a problem is the forum members deep, deep unhappiness with the way the VB search works.. Google is the best way to search my forum (it handles 2 character content way better) so I am about to pull the trigger on Google Custom Business edition.. I wanted to make a last check to see if Sphinx would do the job better.. But all I can glean from these posts is 'use sphinx if VB search is slow' I don't see any raves about improved user functionality.. Does Sphinx simply improve speed for big forums and reduce the extra machines in a cluster of servers?

Its search functionality I am after.. Does Sphinx add functionality to the forum users experience - or just add speed?

Many thanks..

[kmike]

Yes, Sphinx produces much more relevant search results than the default vB search engines, either builtin or MySQL fulltext. It takes into account keyword proximity when calculating relevance.
I'm not sure though how it compares to Google.

[Deriel]

I think that Sphinx works better than Google CSE. You have total control over Sphinx but not over the content indexed by Google nor the time that Google takes to index new posts.

[Jase2]

Can you still use Sphinx for a pretty small forum? I'm not a big fan of the default hehe.

[Spinball]

Originally Posted by Jah-Hools

Wotcher Spinbal,

A quick question if I may.

I see you are using Google Custom search on your site..

So are you using Sphinx just for the VB Forum search?

Are most members using Google Custom as the default search? And only some using the VB search?

Thanks M8,

See - at 2 million posts search speed isnt a problem for me (so far) - what IS a problem is the forum members deep, deep unhappiness with the way the VB search works.. Google is the best way to search my forum (it handles 2 character content way better) so I am about to pull the trigger on Google Custom Business edition.. I wanted to make a last check to see if Sphinx would do the job better.. But all I can glean from these posts is 'use sphinx if VB search is slow' I don't see any raves about improved user functionality.. Does Sphinx simply improve speed for big forums and reduce the extra machines in a cluster of servers?

Its search functionality I am after.. Does Sphinx add functionality to the forum users experience - or just add speed?

Many thanks..

I don't have details of how many people use the Google search or how. But it's a useful alternative to the Sphinx search. We can only use Sphinx for the vB forums search. I don't have the time to look at learning how Sphinx works unfortunately.

[eoc_Jason]

Originally Posted by Jah-Hools

See - at 2 million posts search speed isnt a problem for me (so far) - what IS a problem is the forum members deep, deep unhappiness with the way the VB search works.. Google is the best way to search my forum (it handles 2 character content way better) so I am about to pull the trigger on Google Custom Business edition.. I wanted to make a last check to see if Sphinx would do the job better.. But all I can glean from these posts is 'use sphinx if VB search is slow' I don't see any raves about improved user functionality.. Does Sphinx simply improve speed for big forums and reduce the extra machines in a cluster of servers?

Its search functionality I am after.. Does Sphinx add functionality to the forum users experience - or just add speed?

One big problem with the stock vB code is that it likes to do a lot of post-filtering of the returned results. It happened way too often (to me and others) that searches where I know a keyword should appear (because I put the word in a specific place to do the test) vB will return "No results found" because it drops the score so low that it rejects it, even if it was the ONLY result...

Sphinx has it's own scoring system, and depending on how you set it up it can be extremely powerful. But if you want to gain the full benefit you will also need to probably peel through the search.php file and rip out some of the vB scoring so that it doesn't remove relevant results.

Also with sphinx it will return results in the same thread (or post) like view. So having results returned by date or a certain user or whatever is a lot more powerful than what google could probably do.

[rebelde]

I was desperate to get tag search working, so I've worked it out myself. I used Orban's 0.1 "plug-in" version as a base, with Sphinx-0.9.8-rc2 on vBulletin 3.7.1. Only small changes were necessary to support tags.

I don't use prefixes in my forum, so the prefix implementation is incomplete. I just added the prefixes in the full-text index so they are searchable just like any other text in a thread or post. I would be happy to try to walk somebody (with basic PHP skills) through what I think is necessary to get it to work properly.

I have attached my versions of Orban's files. Here are the details of my changes:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

(Please excuse my new username. I haven't posted in this thread before, but I have been a member of vB.org for four years under a different username.)

And finally, thank you Orban! If you are around, turn on private messaging and I'll help however I can.

[orban]

Thanks rebelde, adding prefixes to the full text index is a great idea, I don't know why I haven't considered this. Also re-enabled PMs

[ivanp]

Nice job orban and rebelde! It works great.

I think this code in search_sphinx.php:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

should be changed to:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

Two questions:
1) Is there a fix to make wildcards work?
2) Is there a transliteration support for Sphinx?

[rebelde]

I'm glad it is working for you.

Originally Posted by ivanp

1) Is there a fix to make wildcards work?

From what I can tell from the Sphinx docs, you need to add:
min_prefix_len = 3
prefix_fields = title (maybe more?)
enable_star = 1

I'm not sure where you add these lines, though. I would think that they go in:
index thread : post - first two
index threaddelta : post - first two
searchd - enable_star = 1

Let us know if you find out where they go, and if it slows searches much.

Transliteration? I'm not sure. Check the Sphinx docs.