Searches that include hyphenated words return no results. Is there a fix for this?

[macromotion]

macromotion I tried "z-wave" including quotes and it returned results!

This was actually fixed yesterday (see post above) but we experienced a Sphinx search engine collapse (my term) near the end of the day. That basically shut down our forum. We got it going again last night by changing the search type back to the default DB setting. This morning, we downgraded to an older, more stable version of Sphinx and are currently in the process of re-indexing again. That process is about 1/2 done. If it finishes successfully, we'll be in good shape tomorrow.

[macromotion]

*** FIXED *** So, all set now. The search type conversion to Sphinx fixed this issue. Search is working really well now.

[macromotion]

Sphinx searches work for us but unfortunately, Sphinx breaks after several weeks and we get this when trying to access the forum:

A System Error has occured.
The software is experiencing a systems error.
You should attempt to repeat your last action. If this error occurs again, please contact the site administrator.

If we change the Search Type back to the default vB search engine, the forum becomes accessible again. HOWEVER, we're back to the problem with the hyphenated word searches. A search on "Z-Wave" or "Sub-Forum" or anything with a hyphen returns no results. Our preference would be to use the default search engine but we're at a loss on how to make it work. Is there anything else we could try?

Here's the forum again: https://forums.homeseer.com/

[glennrocksvb]

Put the site on debug mode to see the actual error message.

[macromotion]

there's a daemon process (or something) that's supposed to be running in the background for Sphinx. Looks like that stopped. Our IT guy started it up and the search and forum are operational again. We don't know why this process stops and need to research that a bit to see if there's a solution.

[macromotion]

Hyphens are a stop character so word-word should search for "word word."

If it isn't finding the single words, are they in the words table?

Wayne Luke I asked above but you did not reply ... what is the "words table" and how do I work with that?

[Wayne Luke]

The words table is a table in your database. You would query it with SQL queries to see if a word exists...

select from word where word='someword'

A workaround would be to use a custom Google Site Search. I believe there are instructions to integrate this on vbulletin.org.

I've created a JIRA here - https://tracker.vbulletin.com/vbulle...sues/VBV-18964 . I don't know if it is a duplicate. This comes up every year or so and I've asked customers to create an improvement request JIRA in the past. I don't know if they did or not.

[macromotion]

The words table is a table in your database. You would query it with SQL queries to see if a word exists...

select from word where word='someword'

If you look at this page, you'll see many instances of "Z-Wave": https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/li...-wave-homeseer

However, if you type "Z-Wave" into the search box at the top of the page, no results are found. That's the problem. Is there anyone at vBulletin who can take a look at this and offer a fix. I emailed support about this issue this morning. We're happy to pay for help. How do we get this resolved?

[Wayne Luke]

As I stated above "Z-WAVE" isn't a word. It is two word... Z and WAVE. WAVE will be indexed because it meets the minimum requirement of 4 characters. Z will not be indexed.

The fix isn't simple. It requires a fundamental rewrite of how searches are done in vBulletin 5.

[macromotion]

As I stated above "Z-WAVE" isn't a word. It is two word... Z and WAVE. WAVE will be indexed because it meets the minimum requirement of 4 characters. Z will not be indexed.

The fix isn't simple. It requires a fundamental rewrite of how searches are done in vBulletin 5.

It what you're saying is true, then why can I search for Z-Wave ON THIS FORUM and get these results: https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/sear...22z-wave%22%7D

Why does it work here and not on our forum? Your answer does not make sense. Try it for yourself!

[Wayne Luke]

We use Sphinx search here. It may handle things differently. If you're running a dedicated server or a Cloud VM (AWS, Digital Ocean, Rackspace Cloud, Google Cloud, Etc...), then you can install Sphinx Search and use it.

[Wayne Luke]

This issue will be resolved in the next version of vBulletin. Please see:

https://tracker.vbulletin.com/vbulletin5/issues/VBV-12167

If a word is hyphenated, it will be index like:

word1
word2
word1-word2

If either word is less than 4 characters (the default limit) it will be dropped but the hyphenated variant would be kept. So with 'z-wave' we would index both 'z-wave' and 'wave'.

[macromotion]

This issue will be resolved in the next version of vBulletin. Please see:

https://tracker.vbulletin.com/vbulletin5/issues/VBV-12167

If a word is hyphenated, it will be index like:

word1
word2
word1-word2

If either word is less than 4 characters (the default limit) it will be dropped but the hyphenated variant would be kept. So with 'z-wave' we would index both 'z-wave' and 'wave'.

Very good news! We had to revert to your default search (because Sphinx kept crashing on us) and it will be great to have this working finally. Do you have an ETA for the next version release?

[Wayne Luke]

If all goes well, in about 6-7 weeks. There are three weeks left in the development cycle and three-four weeks of testing/certification after that.