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New Site Search!

Discussion in 'Sorcerous Sundries' started by Taluntain, Jan 28, 2013.

  1. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    [​IMG] http://www.sorcerers.net/Main/search.php

    I've replaced the old internal site search script with a Google-supported solution. There should be several benefits to this; among them improved search result relevance, much more up to date indexes and best of all, it can search both the website and the forums at once, so it's an all-in-one solution for digging through the whole site.

    Try it out and let me know how you like it. I'm still making some modifications to the styling and the results so this will still be improved. Right now it's searching everything, including some things that it'd make sense to leave out, so if you spot anything like that let me know so I can optimize it further.
     
  2. Master of Nuhn

    Master of Nuhn Wear it like a crown Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    I never used the old site search, so it's a bit hard to compare. I guess I like it.

    One thing: I searched on my name (EGOTRIP!) and I get a muckload of links to all kinds of pages (walkthroughs, FR history, game movies) with a line saying that I'm online with a whole bunch of other people, "currently hiding in the...".
    I only expected a reference to a helm (SP Items, in download section of BG2) and a small (and incomplete) uploaded list of items of Marrok's Forge (NWN).

    I don't think people really care who's online and won't search for that, but maybe that's just me. Still, searching for a name might get you quickly to an uploaded file you're searching for.
     
  3. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Yea, that's definitely another area of the site that I need to exclude from search results... that one and the hourly quote are really messing things up. Basically all of the site navigation and menus need to be excluded.
     
  4. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    I've excluded the mentioned areas but the changes won't be reflected until Google re-crawls the entire site, which might take a while. I've also excluded most of the archives since including them diluted the relevance of the searches more than it helped it.

    Also, the Search link has moved to a more prominent place at the bottom of the main Sections menu. Really makes more sense to have it there and it should be much more accessible (and used) now.
     
  5. Urithrand

    Urithrand Mind turning the light off? ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    Are the search results dependent on your robots.txt file? I never really thought about it as I use Google custom search too...
     
  6. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Google respects robots.txt, if you have one, so yes... but if you've got nothing that you want excluded you don't really need it.
     
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