Re: my.php.net

We had gone through many of the things you mention before, and everything has it's own reason, I can assure you ;)

Let's say, for instance, I don't use MySQL very much, but I know there's a function to get a result row, so I open the url: http://php.net/mysql_get_row dead end. OK, so I open another URL, http://php.net/mysql and I'm closer to where I need to be.

Well, If you would like to get some info on MySQL functions, you will probably start from mysql anyway (at least this is what I do ;).

Now let's say I'm looking for something a bit more obscure, so I use the onpage search input box, and enter 'reload' (just for argument's sake). Oops, it defaults to doing a function quickref search; no problem, I click the link to do a whole site search.

Well this default is what most of the users expect (despite that it is the same as if they write in the keyword to the URL ;).

Well ok, I have some results, but not really what I want, so I'd like to try the word 'refresh' instead. Hmm, neither my last search term is in the 'search for: ' box, nor is the type of search I did selected in the 'in the: ' drop-down menu.

We experimented with this stuff a long time ago. The 'problem' with this is that the pages are cached, which is actually good for our servers. So any search term someone enters will be 'remembered' for anybody else using the same public cache. We had many bugreports about this, and removed this 'feature'. However I do have plans to adding this again, but with a different spin. I had a my.php.net RFC here some time ago, in which I outlined this. The solution is to have dynamically loaded small page parts (CSS, JS), which are not cached. So most of the page can be cached, and user specific CSS and JS code can enhance the experience (ie. set the search box to some default, or select the previous search type dropdown element).

So I renter my new term, select how I want to search again and make the search. Great, ncurses_refresh was what I was after; but wait, the first four results are in languages I don't speak, yet I have a language preference set?

You have selected 'whole site' search instead of 'documentation' search hey! You are cheating ;) Anyway, doc search is defaulted now to English, which is not bad most of the time. But it will be enhanced to default to the preferred one. Why isn't that done so far? - It would be very nice to have advanced search features, like restricting the search to only function documentation pages in one language, or being able to specify AND/OR relations between keywords. This all can be done with htdig, but...

     - I didn't have time for it :)
     - Most guys say mnogosearch is better, and pl.php.net will
       experiment with mnogosearch
     - Stig (who works for FastSearch) said he may be able to
       set up a central search server at alltheweb for us, which
       would mean all the time we spend on the search feature goes
       to the trash...

I don't mean to be pedantic as php.net is one of the finest resources on the net. However, there have been some annoyances in search and navigation flow that with the advent of setting a cookie I would have hoped to be eliminated. I'm just playing Devil's Advocate in the hopes of streamlineing some of the idiosyncrancies I've found in using the site.

Well, there are inconsistencies yes. As I have time, I contribute to fixing them (while discussing problems here too). But the website project is open for any contributions too ;). Setting a cookie does not solve anything. We should keep in mind that things should work with caching, on one hundred mirror sites, for users with all kinds of browsers (even wget, links and lynx), etc.

Lastly, in getting a mirror of the site, I noticed that index.php spews a couple seemingly needless warnings. I've attached a patch that may be of use.

OK, I'll apply this... Goba