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- Apr 27, 2008
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- 36
I installed Enhanced Search but it's crashing and need to upgrade the server to use it. The default XF SE is awful. What search do you guys use on your forums? My forum is about 1.25M posts. Thanks.
Best search option for XF 2?
- Thread starter pjk
- Start date
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- Jan 17, 2005
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- 1,021
ES is pretty much it and actually XF hardly utilizes it anyway and still XF search sucks. Most my members search my forum via Google.
- Moderator
- #3
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- Nov 23, 2011
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- 1,606
Threadloom is good, not sure if they have an XF2 implementation yet.
- Admin
- #5
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- Feb 11, 2016
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- 101
We have released our XF2 implementation out of beta recently. It's free for forums up to 1M posts, and starts at $5 a month. More than happy to extend a 30 day trial to make sure it's a good fit for your community.
Install is like other XF2 addons, but we do offer install assistance at no charge if you require it.
https://threadloom.com/search
- Thread starter
- #6
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- Apr 27, 2008
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- 36
I wish I would have known about this prior to upgrading my server and setting up ES. Do you have any demo forums using it? Thanks!
- Admin
- #7
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- Feb 11, 2016
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Absolutely -
Here is a side by side demo on a 5M+ post forum:
HomesteadingToday
One thing I'd ask is to look at the results, as they are different. Instead of just keywords, Threadloom digs deep to bring the best and most relevant content to the search resulting in longer time on page, additional pageviews and an overall satisfied user.
We also offer a near instant image search as well - you can see it on this slightly less than 1M post forum:
theMouthPiece
On theMouthPiece you can also see our List Builder product that will allow you to build a double opted-in mailing list for your site, based on quality posts.
I'm more than happy to answer any other questions you may have, as well as demo any of our products for you.
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- Thread starter
- #8
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- Apr 27, 2008
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Thanks. How does Threadloom work? Is it simply an addon? Can you please send the XF 2 integration?
- Admin
- #9
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- Feb 11, 2016
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- 101
Hi pjk -
It's an addon, that uses our servers to process the searches - as far as sending you the XF2 integration. My recommendation is for you to sign up for an account - by going here. From there you can add your XF2 forum into the dashboard, and download the customized app for your site. Feel free to use the TAZVIP coupon code for your community.
If you have any issues please feel free to reply to this thread, or to start a conversation with me.
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- Nov 3, 2013
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I agree with that. I run it on VBulletin. Also have Sphinx which ran great for years but seems temperamental as of late - guessing it's because of PHP7 but not sure.
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I'm still using XF1.5 and fewer than a million posts, but have been using Threadloom on my site for a year or so now and love it. The product is customizable and the support is superior. When I upgrade to XF2, I will be installing Threadloom at the same time.
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- Dec 9, 2011
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- 452
I also still run XF1.5, but with ES (on ElasticSearch 5.6), which I honestly think works really well.
After experiencing first-hand that great evil which is Tapatalk I try really hard to avoid using any third-party services which require access to our data in any way.
After experiencing first-hand that great evil which is Tapatalk I try really hard to avoid using any third-party services which require access to our data in any way.
I tried it the past, but I wasn't sure how to get rid of the redundant results you often get, which really annoyed me - maybe a personal quirk of mine.
If, for example, you search by title only for "Homesteading around Amish," notice how many times you get that specific topic on the first page of results (5 if I counted right). Each instance highlights another user reply in the thread. I guess this might seem to make some kind of sense if you were searching for a very specific title like that, where you'd expect just one real result, and then "for convenience sake" you have a page of results with each reply laid out for you (although even then it would be better if the replies were all shown at once by default, perhaps indented beneath the title). But imagine, for example, a book or music site, where a particular author or artist or title might be discussed across multiple boards/nodes and you search for by author/artist name or title and you get something similar results like that quite a bit....
Maybe there's a simple fix for that, though. Can't say I spent much time on it.
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- #14
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- Feb 11, 2016
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Hi sanction9 by default our search process is to look at individual posts, and create the quickest path to the content vs having the user scan the full thread. However, our addon still works with the Xenforo option of "Search titles only" if desired. That along with our filters offers a delightful search interface for the community. Would love the opportunity to offer a walk through of the product, and get feedback you might have for us to make it better.I tried it the past, but I wasn't sure how to get rid of the redundant results you often get, which really annoyed me - maybe a personal quirk of mine.
If, for example, you search by title only for "Homesteading around Amish," notice how many times you get that specific topic on the first page of results (5 if I counted right). Each instance highlights another user reply in the thread. I guess this might seem to make some kind of sense if you were searching for a very specific title like that, where you'd expect just one real result, and then "for convenience sake" you have a page of results with each reply laid out for you (although even then it would be better if the replies were all shown at once by default, perhaps indented beneath the title). But imagine, for example, a book or music site, where a particular author or artist or title might be discussed across multiple boards/nodes and you search for by author/artist name or title and you get something similar results like that quite a bit....
Maybe there's a simple fix for that, though. Can't say I spent much time on it.
Well, yeah, the results I linked to above were the result of searching by title only. I think you always get all the replies returned as separate threads in the results, it's just that sometimes they all show up on the first page of results and sometimes they don't. If you sort by date, they usually do, but the problem (for me) is they often show up in the first results even when sorted by relevance - I guess maybe when there just isn't a lot of matches? Which again, I just think is redundant. There's no reason I can think of why I need to see the same thread in the results multiple times - once for every reply. I think users see them and initially think they're looking at a bunch of different results, but then realize it's the same thread repeated a bunch of times for whatever reason, and they probably have a "Huh?" moment. And people can already click the "x results in this thread" link to see all of those replies if they want; they don't need to see a separate full entry for each reply, presented as if they were all separate threads, in addition to that. But that's just my opinion. You're saying it's all working as intended, which is fine, it's just not something I liked. To each his own. Obviously a lot of other people don't mind it. No big deal. But thank you for the offer.
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- Moderator
- #16
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- May 28, 2007
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- 4,268
ElasticSearch is really nice in theory. Its a shame that XF does not have a full integration. Only basic.
My members still use google.
My members still use google.
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- Mar 18, 2015
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- 19
I went to try your search engine, but was asked for billing credit card full info even for the free edition. It's not a good idea to ask and store CardNum+SecurityCode even for getting free stuff, don't you think?
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- Jun 23, 2016
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- 210
What's wrong with XenForo 2 search system?
I do just fine with the 'default' system.
I do just fine with the 'default' system.
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- Apr 16, 2011
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- 868
It doesn't search everything. Sometimes you type in some keywords, that keyword doesn't return any criteria. Especially those acronyms you type. A lot of players on my Call of Duty Forum would type in "MW3," "COD," and whatnot... so you cut off participation on your site because of that specific issue. I beta tested Threadloom's service, but I didn't install it on 2.0 just yet. Maybe the next update, which is the 2.1 update. Hopefully they have it ready for 2.1.
It's a nice service, but I don't want to be paying too much money towards them (shh... don't tell them that.)
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2011
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- 452
It doesn't work on search terms of 3 characters or shorter. Lots of acronyms are just three letters like DNA, USA, UFO, as well as common English words such as car, sun, ice, cat, dog. Also, it's just a plain database search, so it doesn't have search engine features such as weighting e.g. based on relevancy or recency (displaying more recent content first in the result set) or approximate string matching (so that a search for e.g. "Jennifers" will include hits for "Jennifer", "Jennifer's" and "Jennifers").
What I want to know is what is wrong with XF's Enhanced Search add-on? And how is Threadloom supposedly better? And why are admins willing to give a third-party access to all their data in this manner? (I assume Threadloom gets access to private messages and non-public areas of the forums as well.)
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