Re: cvs: phpweb / search.php

Hi Gabor, These are all very good ideas, and I don't see a problem with implementing them. What we have in place currently (with google) is an "emergency fix" to reduce the load from a crippling 230+ down to a more managable level; it means we can use *all* the mirrors regardless of their local search capabilities, and still be reasonably sure that the user will end up with a useful page. The real problem is that phpweb itself is terribly inefficient (eg: manual lookups and the shortcut features typically result in 3 redirects, the phpdoc manual pages do too much on each page load etc.); we don't have enough CPU to meet the demands of the visitors to our site. So, by all means, add the favourite search engine via my.php.net, (Philip also suggested a favourite mirror cookie too); but lets try and keep it light, and lets try also to reduce the number of redirects and magic URLs :) As for search.php.net; we probably don't have quite enough CPU to host it on our current box, so we need another box for that. Where is it going to come from? :) If we can set all the right hints for dedicated internet search engines, why should we burden ourselves with that? --Wez. On Fri, 23 May 2003, Gabor Hojtsy wrote: > > Hehe, we could make it randomly pick one from an array ;) > > Hm. These are the times when I am happy that I have not put much work > into the search features (just polised up the whole stuff, and rewritten > the setup instructions with the help of some mirror maintainers). > > It also hit me as a suprise, that while Andrew's note maintanence fix > was turned down becasuse it was not discussed, a search switch to > alltheweb/google was done without any discussion (at least without > discussion visible for the webmaster's ML). Hm, interesting... > > First I have planned to note that the alltheweb/google links were > without site restrictions intentionally. This would have turned out in a > discussion though. The idea was that if the user was unable to find > something on the site then he would probably like to search for it on > ATW or Google, but on the whole web (in case of the PHPNuke forks for > example, which are commonly associated with PHP). > > I am not universally against this external search stuff, but a > discussion would probably be able to convince me that these external > engines (ATW, Yahoo Search or Google in particular) know what language a > page is in. As language restriction was a near stuff on the my php.net > wishlist. > > Also on the topic or randomly picking a search service I would be > happier to have this user selected instead [as part of My PHP.net]. But > only in case a descussion comes to an end that this will replace the old > htdig setup, and we can trash that code away. > > BTW I am also not convinced that google or alltheweb indexes the php.net > sites soo deeply that it can return as good results as a properly set up > search engine. I was asking for a long time for a proper htdig setup on > php.net. What was on the site was a joke of course. The index was not > regenerated for months, and the htdig running was an old one, it was > down several times... > > I still beleive that having a search.php.net site set up with some > strong search engine (eg. mnogosearch), which would have an index and > would be able to handle all site searches would be better. I cannot > donate any time or server resources however to set something like this > up. But the whole site needs to be only indexed once, as all the mirror > sites have the same content. In case someone can step up and setup a > search server (Stig offered that a long time ago, but then nothing > happened ;() it would be better to use that. Until then Google or some > other external solution may be good, but I have some problems with it > (see above). > > Goba > > >