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Does anyone have experience comparing one vs. the other? What is your experience?
ThreadLoom vs. Sphinx Search
- Thread starter highlander29
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I can't speak to the other, but Threadloom is amazing in comparison to standard vBulletin search. Works great!
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What's amazing about it?
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It works 
Anyone familiar with the default vBulletin search tool knows it is nearly useless. Put in search key words, and you can be staring at numerous threads with those keywords and still not find them in the search results. The Threadloom search tool is super easy to install, is available within days of installing (after crawling your site for the first time), and it's basic version is free depending on size of site. My experience so far with it is that it's extremely accurate in finding search results, allows the user to filter results by numerous parameters (dates, users, etc...), and updates very quickly as new content is added. It is head and shoulders above the default tool (and this is the feedback of my forum members as well). Only gripe - if you click 'Advanced Search' you get the default vB search tool. I'd like the option to use Threadloom regardless of whether members use the standard OR the advanced search option.
Anyone familiar with the default vBulletin search tool knows it is nearly useless. Put in search key words, and you can be staring at numerous threads with those keywords and still not find them in the search results. The Threadloom search tool is super easy to install, is available within days of installing (after crawling your site for the first time), and it's basic version is free depending on size of site. My experience so far with it is that it's extremely accurate in finding search results, allows the user to filter results by numerous parameters (dates, users, etc...), and updates very quickly as new content is added. It is head and shoulders above the default tool (and this is the feedback of my forum members as well). Only gripe - if you click 'Advanced Search' you get the default vB search tool. I'd like the option to use Threadloom regardless of whether members use the standard OR the advanced search option.
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Any who actually familiar with the default vBulletin search tool knows it is not useless at all, in fact its basically MySQL Search.
(at least on vB3 & vB4 - vB5 is a different story, but you didnt mention a version).
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It works
Anyone familiar with the default vBulletin search tool knows it is nearly useless. Put in search key words, and you can be staring at numerous threads with those keywords and still not find them in the search results. The Threadloom search tool is super easy to install, is available within days of installing (after crawling your site for the first time), and it's basic version is free depending on size of site. My experience so far with it is that it's extremely accurate in finding search results, allows the user to filter results by numerous parameters (dates, users, etc...), and updates very quickly as new content is added. It is head and shoulders above the default tool (and this is the feedback of my forum members as well). Only gripe - if you click 'Advanced Search' you get the default vB search tool. I'd like the option to use Threadloom regardless of whether members use the standard OR the advanced search option.
I agree standard VBulletin search isn't very good. My question was about Sphinx vs. Threadloom. I moved to Sphinx when my forum had risen to about 2M posts because the speed of standard VBulletin search was so excruciatingly slow and the results were poor as you stated. I use Digital Point Sphinx search. It's much faster, there is a broader set of searching options and and the results appear far superior to standard VBulletin search. I'm considering ThreadLoom and am wondering about the difference. One difference is I already paid for Sphinx and Threadloom seems to have a monthly charge
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I'll rephrase - my forum members consistently complain that the default vBulletin search tool on my version 4 board does not function well and is not user friendly. As far as how it technically works, you're obviously an expert there. I'm just stating my member's satisfaction level with it over the past 9 years.
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I believe there is a Threadloom thread here where they talk about criteria for monthly charges. It's free up to a certain volume of searches I believe. Sorry - I don't know anything about Sphinx. My members love Threadloom search so far. Hope you get some feedback.
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I'd say the same applies to all forum platforms. None of them seem to have the level of search functionality I'd expect to see in today's software.
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What do you expect to see in today's software?
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I agree! It doesn't work work worth a damn. Easier to find stuff in your own forum using Google search.
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Search predictions incorporating auto-complete.
Image and attachment searching.
Search logs.
The option to enable/disable fuzzy string searches.
Options to enable and incorporate local results from external engines.
Better back-end integration to search admin/mod logs.
Better client side functionality to enable selectable and targeted data streams.
Additional trigger points for search entries.
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Ok, so what do you mean by it does not function well ? and in what way is it not user friendly ?
I run the MySQL full text search on vB3, and I dont recall any of my members ever complaining about it.
vB4 also uses MySQL fulltext, though admittedly in a different way.
It's not as good (IMO) but I cannot say I have ever seen a large number of complaints about it.
FYI, You can get the Sphinx plugin from Digital Point for vB4, and by all accounts, that works really well.
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The feedback I get from members is that they have a lot of difficulty finding previous content regardless of what keywords they enter in the default vB search tool whether searching posts or titles. I have heard a lot of other forum owners state the same thing. I have no doubt you know what you are talking about from a technical standpoint That's just the feedback I've gotten.
Our experience with Threadloom is that it accurately pulls search results based on keyword, and that filtering results is much easier.
That's just the feedback I've gotten.Our experience with Threadloom is that it accurately pulls search results based on keyword, and that filtering results is much easier.
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My experience was that:
1. It just didn't find things very well
2. Performance issues - was incredibly slow
The other thing and I can't hardly recall what the exact new options are but Sphinx adds additional features to advanced search - like maybe searching for posts from a specific user, specific forums, posts vs. threads? I was wondering what ThreadLoom would provide beyond that. And I hate to be negative but what if they were to go bust. Then I'd be left without a search engine and have to reinstall Sphinx which was sort of challenging on my forum and problematic to get it fully working a couple times at first -when it was first installed and more recently with the upgrade to 4.2.5