Where's Drupal.org's search box (sometimes) ?
modul - June 18, 2008 - 11:15
Hi all,
I've noticed, since a week or 2 or so, that sometimes the search box on drupal.org tends to disappear. It doesn't have anything to do with me being logged in or not, at least that's what I seem to notice. I would have searched for a solution myself, but without a search box that's a bit hard to do :-) Anyway, are there other people who noticed this?
The search box is probably
The search box is probably throttled when there is a heavy load on the systems.
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Joep
CompuBase, Drupal websites and design
I miss the search box!!
I miss the search box!! Seriously!
Not complaining, because I understand the problem. But I do miss that search box!
Agreed
... its kinda crucial
Try drupalsearch.org
Give http://drupalsearch.org a try. It is built on Google CSE and allows to search drupal.org with refinements.
Discussion about this at: http://drupal.org/node/272208
- Victor
google site:drupal.org searchterm
I noticed that as well. For most searches, googling site:drupal.org searchterm will do, although it's not ideal.
It's possible that the
It's possible that the search box is "throttled out" because of heavy traffic. That's probably sensible. But when a service is not available, it would be nice to at least put a short notice, "Temporarily unavailable", something like that.
search box should not be throttled
Observing my own behaviour and the quality of output of browsing through the website, I´m pretty sure, that disabling the search box will cause even more traffic on the site, hence is contraproductive and accordingly to disable throttling will cause a higher over all performance. Humble.
No matter what the reason
No matter what the reason for the missing search box don't you think it would be nice for those running site to let us know or maybe they don't care.
BTW to blame it on the throttle mechanism without explanation or education isn't helpful. Should we all just accept that as standard Drupal behavior if we do then that is a good way to assure Drupal winds up on the trash heap with other failed software. All it suggests to me is Drupal isn't reliable or maybe even worse, predictable.
As much as I love messing around with Drupal (with the idea of using it for social sites) I sometimes wonder if it will be up to the task and importantly if I am up to the task of supporting it.
Well, we shouldn't confuse
Well, we shouldn't confuse things, of course. I agree that the unexplainable disappearance of the search box should at least be explainend by the Forum Gods or the Drupal.Org.Giants. It's simply not polite, probably counterproductive and a definite no-no to just "cancel" functionality without any decent explanation.
But that does not mean that Drupal itself would not be good. It is a solid piece of work, and it can go a whole lot further than many a CMS I checked out, just right out of the box. And when you do need to intervene, writing code can usually be minimized because there is so much in the Drupal API that you, as a programmer, can make use of. But, as I suggested, that's a different story. This is about the search box, and it's gone now at the time of writing, 2 PM GMT+2. *sigh* Why???
I see no real harm/foul in
I see no real harm/foul in the design of the throttle....its designed to keep DO up, and therefore 'reliable', depending on your perspective. W/o throttle, it could take ages for pages to load, and frustrate even more members....and that's a sure-fire way to end up in the recycle-bin of 'failed software' and other websites.
As for warnings form the DO Gods - there's no real way of telling when throttle will kick in, how long it will be there, etc. Its all a function of site traffic. I'm sure if there was some 'known' reason for a particular malfunction, it would be posted...maybe not on the home page...but somewhere in these forums. With thousands of post/day, its easy for these notes to get burried. Any rational person would understand this, understand its the work of many, MANY volunteers, and its FREE.
It was suggested above to simply google "site:drupal.org searchterm" ....I think this works very well. In the week or two that the search box has been MIA, I actually think it produces more relevant results. The disadvantage is that occasionally, I want to search specifically for a 'page' or 'project'....but still, Google does a pretty good job of delivering.
Few, if any open source programs have this much user-contributed documentation. Its the nature of almost any open source program to forgo documentation, simply because there are no volunteers to document. Given the vast amount of info here, and the help of Google - I really dont see what all the fuss is about.
A good indicator
Counting the number of "where's the search" threads on the first page of this forum yesterday was probably a good indicator of how well-used the search function was ;)
I have to say, though, that I've always found Google to give much more relevant results than the D.O search.
Using Google site search on Drupal.org
I was at a loss too when I didn't see the search box. Then I tried Google site search on Drupal.org and it was so effective it occured to me that maybe the team decided that given google-site-search's effectiveness they didn't need their own site search. But then it reappeared :)