Search delay very annoying

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Mark Wilsdorf
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Joined: Thu Dec 24, 2009 8:41 pm
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Search delay very annoying

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

Finally commenting on something I've found very annoying for years...

Suppose I do a forum search, and it returns 2 pages of results. If I scroll through the first page for several seconds, then click on the link to the 2nd page, I get the "Sorry but you cannot use search at this time. Please try again in a few minutes." message.

It seems like your search delay is too long. Also, this is NOT asking to do a new search, just continue to more results from the original search.

By the way, having difficult-to-use search features leads people to simply post a new message...when they might have otherwise found what they needed in old posts.
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Tim Green
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Re: Search delay very annoying

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Mark,

Thanks for posting this. I'll have another look at the search settings. Search is one of the biggest weaknesses of the PHPBB forum package; I would really like to see radically improved search capabilities. However, I'm not quite sure what's happening in your case: The search flood interval for registered users is just 10 seconds, so you should never have to wait as long as you describe between searches. Also, the search cache timeout is a full 30 minutes, and that should provide plenty of time to continue on through your existing searches. Or are you spending so much time reading the results that you would need more than 30 minutes? If that is really the case I can try increasing it to an hour... :?
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Mark Wilsdorf
Posts: 151
Joined: Thu Dec 24, 2009 8:41 pm
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Re: Search delay very annoying

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

No Tim, the delay has hit me after reading the 1st results page for just a few seconds--just scrolling down through it and examining the results.

I don;t visit this board often--just when I'm working on a big H&M project, usually--but this time the delay seems worse than I remember (especially that problem of having to wait to go to the next page of search results).
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Tim Green
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Re: Search delay very annoying

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Mark,

This may have been a server or routing issue, particularly if you are on the American continent. The forum's web server is in Europe, and if there is congestion across the Atlantic that might lead to problems.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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