It is buggy to say that you are re-indexing the site here:
admin/settings/search

If you are just eliminating the current index so that it can be re-updated in the next cron job.

To re-index it people will expect the index to be repopulated.

Mike

Comments

moshe weitzman’s picture

Title: Re-indexing site should re-index site, not just nix index » improve search reindex help text

explain that re-index will happen over the next few cron runs.

lets use constructive language if possible. this is a social project ...

mgifford’s picture

Sorry, didn't mean to be confrontational. But, to re-index something is misleading if it is just clearing the index.

If it's just going to be cleared, fine, but it isn't re-indexing or re-freshing the index.

I think that the immediate solution is to change the text to say clear index rather than re-index. Me explaining to my clients that re-indexing is actually clearing is a bad social hack.

Ideally it would actually re-index the site. Easiest way that I can see to do that though would be to have it redirect to the cron.php page, although that would also be confusing to users.

Mike

magico’s picture

Category: bug » feature

It has the following text: The search index is not cleared but systematically updated to reflect the new settings. Searching will continue to work but new content won't be indexed until all existing content has been re-indexed.

It seems natural that it will mark the system to update the next time the cron runs. OTOH if what you need is a function to reindex imediatelly this can be a feature request.

mgifford’s picture

Yes, a feature request to reindex the whole site (ie. drop current index and start from scratch) is what I was ultimately looking for.

Mike

magico’s picture

Title: improve search reindex help text » Re-index the search index without waiting for the next cron job
Anonymous’s picture

I agree with the OP on this. The wording Re-index on the button is connotative to mean rebuild the index from scratch. "Drop current index" or "Remove current index" would be a better wording to allow connotation to mean the correct thing. Also, wording in the administrative search page needs to indicate the cron.php script needs to execute from cron. I totally missed that for about four weeks or so. I kept hitting Re-index expected that to update the index and take care building the index.

Earnie
http://for-my-kids.com
http://give-me-an-offer.com

L4san’s picture

Version: x.y.z » 7.x-dev

mgifford: Still a feature request?

robertDouglass’s picture

Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

Misconception: submitting the re-index form does *not* drop the search index. It might take days to re-index your site and your visitors wouldn't be able to search in that time. I don't see a feature that drops the search index as being useful. Truncate the search_index table if that is your goal. If you have some suggestions for improving the documentation of existing search features, please open another issue.

mgifford’s picture

Status: Closed (won't fix) » Closed (fixed)

Just looked at this at Drupal 6. The confirmation message is pretty good:

Are you sure you want to re-index the site?
The search index is not cleared but systematically updated to reflect the new settings. Searching will continue to work but new content won't be indexed until all existing content has been re-indexed. This action cannot be undone.

It was initially reported in March 19, 2006. Not sure when this changed, but it is better.

livingegg’s picture

I know this issue is closed, but I also feel that the button label is misleading. The button should say what it does, not what it doesn't do. The screen in drupal 5.x is unnecessarily confusing and/or misleading.