seasmith wrote:Is there some way to make the search function go back more than a year?
Maol,
The T'bolts search engine is cruel experiment in exasperation.
In google, use
Site: thunderbolts.info your search term(s)
allynh wrote:I use Google rather than the Forum search engine.
davesmith_au wrote:Hi all. I KNOW many will not like this announcement. I KNOW many users use the search function on the forum for many reasons. But having said that, our database now has over 80,000 indexed search terms and around 3 MILLION wordmatches.
Back in the day, we never envisaged the forum growing to the popularity it has. 100,000 posts seemed like a lifetime away, and now we've exceeded that! The database has grown so large that it is getting difficult to manage, and culling the search function would go a long way towards downsizing it..
Please remember, that we who run this forum are volunteers, and we mostly have very limited knowledge of database and server setup and management. Funny thing is, it is my experience that most support people within the hosting environment, have little actual knowledge themselves, but rather read from scripts and FAQs how to "help" their clients. There are also those one can pay (over and above what we already pay for site hosting) to do certain jobs, who themselves have limited knowledge outside whatever it is they're trained in, and who all too readily take your money yet wash their hands once something falls into their "too hard basket".
But one thing is clear, our database needs to be trimmed of excess fat, and the search function is the biggest contributor to our weight problem, after the posts themselves.
There are of course many off-site search engines which can be programmed for specific sites and specific parts of sites, and I am thinking we are going to have to send users off-site to one of those facilities for searching.
However IF anyone on here knows of anyone who can offer a better suggestion, I am willing to listen.
Regards, Dave Smith.
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