Give Better Help When Search Is Disabled

Search is disabled during periods of heavy use.

Please note that this has been answered many times before.

Let's give users a little better help with this (which will reduce the support requests and free admins to work on more important things).

It would say "Search has been temporarily disabled due to performance reasons. If you'd like to help please see issue...X. In the meantime you can use a site specific search like "site:drupal.org something" on most major search engines." and in issue X we can discuss next steps (I leave it to Narayan/Killes to decide how they'd like to direct help on those next steps).

I don't know how to best implement this. If it were up to me I'd do something in hook_init of the drupal_org.module.

What if we just update the theme to use a Google Site Search if the drupal.org search is down? Why tell people what to do, when we can automate it? Here is all you need for a Google Site Search box. No signup, no hassle :)

   <form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search"><div>
    <input type="hidden" name="ie" value="UTF-8" />
    <input type="hidden" name="oe" value="UTF-8" />
    <input type="hidden" name="domains" value="drupal.org" />
    <input type="hidden" name="sitesearch" value="drupal.org" />
    <input type="text" class="form-text" name="q" size="20" maxlength="255" value="" />
    <input type="submit" class="form-submit" name="btnG" value="Google Search" /></div>
   </form>

Well, I was trying to be search engine agnostic. If we push people directly to using Google search we should use the "AdSense for Search" function so that at least the ads people will see will benefit the Drupal Association.

How do you suggest determining when search is disabled?

@Gerhard/Narayan - when you disable search would you be willing to enable a secondary module that takes over for it instead?

Maybe this has been answered many times, but how can we know that ?

At that moment, we cannot do a search to find the answer, because we get the error "Page not Found"

Even today (19/06/2008 9:30 AM Brussels time), I get the error "Page not found" when I click on "Advanced Search" (see the screenshot).

Here is another option:

We have a change in the theme to check if function exists for search, and if it does not, it displays either the alternate search form (see below), or a message saying search is disabled.

For alternate search, the benefit of Google Adsense search is that the results appear within a properly themed Drupal page (i.e. the menus, the blocks, ..etc. are all the same). If we use Site Search, the page is no longer "Drupal".

Either way, we need to give people a hint. If nothing, it will reduce the amount of issues open for this.

Give http://drupalsearch.org a try. It is based on Google CSE and searches drupal.org with options of refinement.
See discussion about this at:
http://drupal.org/node/272208

-Victor

@vkr11

This does not solve the problem of telling the user what to do when search is disabled. It is an external site altogether and not under the control of the Drupal Association, so no chance of getting it linked to for the time being.

@all

We can also modify the drupalorg module http://drupal.org/project/drupalorg to detect if the search module is disabled, and provide a stub search (even just "search is currently not available"). It would also hijack the menu for http://drupal.org/search/node as well with a stub page.

If this is acceptable by others, I will roll a patch for that module.

@kbahey,

I never intended it to look like an official site. It was just a tool I was using and thought of sharing with people.
I have added disclaimer at the bottom of each page at http://drupalsearch.org .

You guys should do whatever is best for the community.

Thanks,
Victor

Various drupal modules could substitute for the built-in search module, including google_cse (embeds a google cse in an iframe) and winlivesearch (performs a search via live.com webservice and returns results via the search module api).

#4 with googleadsense search (or any kind of stub if that's not an option) sounds like a good idea.

Let's just add a temporary search that links to Google - and appends "site:drupal.org" to the search.

This would help soo many people!

Steve

To the maintainers of this website: you might want to give sphinx ( http://www.sphinxsearch.com ) a try.
We implemented it on our website (netlog.com: 35 million members, more then 12 million search queries/day ) and this engine keeps up nicely (running on 2 quad-core Xeons)

Sounds like an excellent product, but it would be nice if we could actually use it on the sphinx site as part of a demo.

Thanks
Stephen

We are currently looking at Google Custom Search Engine and Xaphian. Xaphian seems to be popular with Drupal implementors right now. We are also looking Solr and Java search engines.

Xapian not Xaphian ;) never heard of it before but thought I check it out and it sounds quite great.

http://xapian.org/

If it is faster then the normal drupal search I would say go for it as this is a) independent from big companies b) open source c) I can see a module that doesn´t have a price tag to switch to better search in drupal -> so in the long run that might be the better way to go, BUT it sounds horribly complicated so my uneducated guess is that implementing this might take some time and until there is an option there won´t be a search function.

I know this has been discussed to the end but my own experience as a 6 month drupaler is that I would have quit using drupal if it weren´t for the search function. Until after the first 4 weeks I would have quit instantly without looking for an alternative search. From week 4- 12 I might have looked at an alternative search but been mightly frustrated at the inaccurate results you get (the custom google search does not compare when it comes to get to the spot on result that the much slower drupal internal search gets you) possibly giving up using drupal. After that it probably would not have mattered much which search I used as you get accustomed to what you are actually looking for. So it hurts the new users the most.

just my 2 cent - maybe that insight helps a bit in the decision making... again I would go for the long term solution that benefits all drupal sites (who all probably have the same problem) besides maybe loosing some new users in the process.

Totally agree, I keep keeping my fingers crossed that hopefully someone might implement something that will be better than the rest as requested in other forums.

Drupal is an excellent framework but since version 4 no improvement has been made in the search area which I think is what Drupal is lacking. I am still using 4.7.11 as personally there are no significant improvements in the framework that would make me want to move forward regardless of the fact that version 4 has now been dropped. OK, maybe GUI wise but not in the searching area which is what everyone seems to be wanting.

But I do thank the community for all their effort.

Thank you all.

Ooops, and I apologise for posting in the wrong forum.

Assigning this to me

Narayan - note that I've got some work done in http://drupal.org/node/273483

Wouldn't Google Custom Search carry some form of price tag - if not money you would be tipping your hand of all your customer/member queries to Google. I'd look toward something that kept your site data (including the search data) owned and controlled by the site. If a site owner wishes to use Google they can always implement it on their own. (Or am I missing something?)

cozzi: this issue is about what Drupal.org itself should do, not what Drupal the software should support.

It feels a bit like a greasemonkey solution, but.... You could shift the responsibility for providing a search box from the d.o server to the visitor's browser automatically, when the server is under high load and search has been disabled, by using jQuery-enabled Javascript to spot the lack of search form. The script would then compensate by adding a form to use any external search engine.

Example Javascript at http://www.jpstacey.info/applications/drupal/drupal_org.js - I had this idea a while back but have only just got it to work.

As a proof of concept, log out, and then bookmark and click on the two bookmarklets below. They puts Gábor's sample Google-search HTML from comment #3 into the header, but only if there's no existing search box. See the JS at the link above for more details.

insert jQuery from drupal.org/misc/jquery.js:
javascript:void(function(){var%20s=document.createElement('script');s.src='/misc/jquery.js';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(s);}())
insert search-box creating Javascript:
javascript:void(function(){var%20s=document.createElement('script');s.src='http://www.jpstacey.info/applications/drupal/drupal_org.js';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(s);}())

I appreciate that if d.o is going to use just Google, it should be done "properly" from an integration point of view, but by using Javascript and overriding mutable methods the actual search form presented could be completely different for different visitors. It would also involve the minimum of development behind the scenes, so wouldn't need us to wait for alternative search options e.g. in the drupalorg module.

This patch has been committed to Drupal.org

This patch has been committed to Drupal.org http://drupal.org/node/273483

...and I just configured and enabled the block.

It is only shown 1) to people who don't have permission to use search 2) using block visibility rules it is limited to just the search* url space. Right now that is true for anonymous users who go to http://drupal.org/search

There are a few oddities with the way that Drupal handles block visibility rules and/or arg() on a 403 which required this "creative" implementation. If you notice any problems with it please update this issue.

I followed the link and came here and read it. I wanted to add that when I followed the link and read the node about drupalsearch.org, it told me about searchdrupal.org, which lets you search just modules, or just the drupal groups site, or a collection of drupal-related sites. I actually found that very useful and think that is the best way to search drupal. I think we should make a documentation page on how to search Drupal.

It can say:
1) Only people logged in can see the search box on Drupal. (Is this true?)
2) Search on Drupal is disabled during times of high traffic.
3) You can also use searchdrupal.org to search which lets you search just modules, or just the drupal groups site, or a collection of drupal-related sites, or other options.
4) You can use use drupalsearch.org.

1) This depends on a lot of factors. I think it's mostly true.
2) True
3/4) I'd rather not give specific search engine recommendations. The searchdrupal.org and drupalsearch.org sites just use google CSE to provide what can be done in google.com itself with the use of "site:groups.drupal.org" or similar...

Why can't someone just put a block up that appears when search is down with the google search box from this page:

http://drupal.org/search/node

I have to say that it's really frustrating not to have a search option when you come to front page and for newcomers to Drupal it must seem impossible to know how to look for stuff - the 'advanced search' link is not highlighted in any way at all.

Here's a back-ported patch of D6 improvements for D5. This could do away with some significant bottlenecks in Drupal.org's search. This patch needs testing and reviews.

http://drupal.org/node/146466#comment-920141

Kieran

is this website netlog.com done in drupal!!?????

@Gábor Hojtsy: this is nice... but how do i make the result display on my drupal site and not on google page?