Xenforo conversion thread

Maybe...would have to go count likes in threads that show vs those that don't, or experiment by liking stuff in a thread with zero likes, refreshing the subforum list each time until it shows up.

Another thought: perhaps since there are other issues with data created post-conversion vs pre-conversion, maybe it has to do with that (threads started before vs after, etc)?
 
I'm sorry for the radio silence on this end.
Things are busy as heck here but next week is looking A LOT quieter and i'll have the other member of the ES Dev team available then.
Ttyl!
 
Interesting note, today i checked out xenforo and it was reporting errors about being out of memory, and was also stuck on finishing a 'search index' after i cranked up all search settings.

It looks like at the much higher settings, it consumes a lot more ram to come up with a proper search index.
I gave it more memory so it could finish the search index, and it completed.

Doesn't look like this improved the search index issue though. For example, i have ~15,000 posts and only 31 pages of posts come up for me.

Anyway, other member of the ES Dev team is on the job as of today and we are going to work on this search thing + old youtube video embeds + autolink problem ASAP.
 
If you need help testing it, lemme know. ;)

My own guess about the search issue(s) is that it is filtering the results against some factor we don't have access to (because I don't see anything in the admin panels for it that look like they could give the results I see).

It's not a strictly date/time based issue, because it does sometimes return results as old as the start of the forum...but it almost always returns MANY more newer results than older ones, if it has the "choice" (enough data to sort). I can't tell if it is actively skipping some years, but in general it seems to be "better at" finding things newer than five-ish years old.

The actual posts it doesn't find do still exist in the old PHPBB forum, as a search can find them there (don't know if it's all of them, but it's more and/or different ones than XF reports).

It often doesn't return all results even for low-post-count members.

I do remember you'd said there was an issue with PHPBB not tallying post count itself vs actual number of posts assigned to particular members, but I don't know if this "indexing issue"(?) could have caused a problem during import that created this search issue, or is totally unrelated and wouldn't have affected XF.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, it's basically indexing something like 15% of the site.
PhpBB also wasn't good with numbers but it wasn't that bad.
At the least it is favoring newer posts so that there isn't a false impression that content is missing in that case.

We have a lot of options to improve the search with different technologies and are at the limit of what can easily be tuned.. will get back to you guys once we've given the search system a proper beating. :D
 
Hey!!!!!! 👋 :es: 👋

I may have fixed the searching problem!
It was a matter of running the index rebuild in the command line because apparently the automatic one fails because it runs out of memory and somehow manages to not report the error.
But on the command line, there is no memory limit by default, so after 20 minutes, it worked.

When searching for my own name, i see 640 pages of results, that times 25 is 16000, which is within +/- 500 of my actual posts.
This tells me the search index might actually be fixed.
1683598376068.png

Do check and see if the search situation has improved!
 
Well...it's better, though really really really really slooooow, but still not quite there. The stuff below is just using random search terms that popped into my head at each test.

For instance, searching for 35E (to find the various battery posts about that cell), XF gives zero results found, using the "search everything" tab.

If I use the "search threads" function, it gives 2000 pages of results, which I know is wrong,
endless-sphere.com

Search threads

endless-sphere.com endless-sphere.com
The several random resutls I clicked on in the list do not have 35E (or 35) anywhere in the thread, don't know if any of the other results do or not.

The old ES archive gives 900+ results


If I search XF for "motor" I get 2000 pages of results, using the "search everything" tab. I don't know if they all have the word in them or not, at least some do as it is highlighted in the search results list for some of them. The "search threads" tab gives what seem to be the same results at a glance.

I didn't get further than that yet, JellyBean The Perfectly Normal Schmoo has decided that the computer is forbidden because it is interrupting her unscheduled bellyrubs. ;)
 
Interestingly, a 35e search doesn't work at all in the default 'search everything' mode.

2023-05-09 12_45_20-Search _ Endless Sphere.png

..but if you search 'threads', you get a super long wait, then correct results.

2023-05-09 12_45_45-Inbox - david@courtesycs.com - Mozilla Thunderbird.png

This looks like a software bug with our version of Xenforo.

So i tried to throw double the cores at the machine to see if i could 2x the speed of search, but Xenforo's code is not not purposefully multithreaded here, so it can't get faster with the way we currently have it set up ( we need to setup elastic search and tell xenoforo to use that )

For the time being i've clipped the maximum pages of search results to 1000 pages because the search function can create a huge CPU prolonged load if not limited.

Yeah we've got more work to do on search
 
Cowardlyduck said:
Thanks Nep! I still keep finding threads which I need to unwatch/watch to get email notifications.
I still think we may have hurt the user base with this and if there's any way we could reset all subscriptions it would be a good way to get infrequent users back to the forum.
Cheers
Click to expand...

Despite Xenforo causing us to temporarily disappear on google ( sitemap generation problem in the software ), engagement is still up about 20-30% since we installed it, so I'm not as worried about this problem as you are.

I agree this should be tackled but the google problem, search problem(s), and content issues are larger fires that must be put out first.
 
neptronix said:
Despite Xenforo causing us to temporarily disappear on google ( sitemap generation problem in the software ), engagement is still up about 20-30% since we installed it, so I'm not as worried about this problem as you are.
Click to expand...
Everyone checking in since they don't get email updates and they haven't figured out to unwatch then watch a thread again ;)
 
neptronix said:
Interestingly, a 35e search doesn't work at all in the default 'search everything' mode.

View attachment 333917

..but if you search 'threads', you get a super long wait, then correct results.
Click to expand...
As noted in my original post about that, I didn't get correct results with "search threads" here. I got 2000 pages of results, and none of the several I randomly checked contained 35e (or even 35).

"Search everything" gave no results at all.



I just retested this, and get the same thing, except it's limited to 1000 pages now instead of 2000. In case its' helpful I copy/pasted the first page of the search results below:




Reports Moderator Admin





Endless Sphere







amberwolf amberwolf

Search















Search results for query: 35e​





















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    A custom frame, 275 hp, 25 kWh electric race bike being designed by a bunch of college bozos to put Ducati on their ass.​


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    Non balancing BMS​


    Get a cheap balancing BMS from eBay and install it yourself. Or get an active balance board and use it in combination with your crappy battery non-management system.




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    la Nina rears her ugly head​


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  3. [IMG alt="neptronix"]https://endless-sphere.com/sphere/data/avatars/s/0/1.jpg?1676599038[/IMG]

    Xenforo conversion thread​


    Despite Xenforo causing us to temporarily disappear on google ( sitemap generation problem in the software ), engagement is still up about 20-30% since we installed it, so I'm not as worried about this problem as you are. I agree this should be tackled but the google problem, search problem(s)...




  5. [IMG alt="neptronix"]https://endless-sphere.com/sphere/data/avatars/s/0/1.jpg?1676599038[/IMG]

    Xenforo conversion thread​


    Interestingly, a 35e search doesn't work at all in the default 'search everything' mode. ..but if you search 'threads', you get a super long wait, then correct results. This looks like a software bug with our version of Xenforo. So i tried to throw double the cores at the machine to see...







Next

Show ignored content




 
Damn, this search is bad even with the index being rebuilt from scratch.

You are correct about the '35e' lookup.... total garbage results no matter how you cut it
Searching for 'mac' gets you nothing, if you search threads, you get irrelevant stuff
Search for 'mac motor' and you get results for 'motor'

Interestingly; an 'everything' search for tsdz2 returns 401 pages or 10025 posts
On ES 1.0, we get 1025 pages or 27119 posts

An everything search for 'cav3' returns 72 pages here VS 74 pages on ES 1.0 ( close enough )

I have the search indexing set to allow searching for a term as short as 2 characters but this is not taking effect.

Another errata:
When previewing search results, the preview doesn't include quoted text that might contain the world you're looking for. Here's an example.

search preview.png

search post.png

Looks like:
3 character and below search terms are totally busted
>= 4 character search terms are hit/miss
user history search seems to be 1:1 with what we see in phpbb.

Another problem: Xenforo support people say the search index only needs to be rebuilt once but the admin backend has been hitting me up to reindex it multiple times a day. I don't know if this is a foreboding problem, or totally normal.


Did some research; the elasticsearch search system plus a paid plugin apparently allows for down to 2 character searches supposedly.
I have some experience with elastic search and my verdict is that it is unstable and can affect system stability - not just a matter of installing it, and boom it works.
I have put on my calendar on the 15th that i'll start the integration process and i should have a week to supervise/tune/diagnose the improved search.

Will let yall know when construction starts and ends!
 
Allrighty, i'm done tuning for the day ( you may have seen a few errors over the last 3h )

Since we don't have time to work on the new posts menu rearrangement, i've thrown a temporary monkey patch at the system:
If you click 'what's new', you will be force-redirected to 'new posts' which is a much superior version of 'what's new'.

Let me know if you have any issues related to this patch.
 
Just got done with a crapton of server reliability tuning and improvements to the SEO situation.
Also fixed the rules post, added a welcome email, and rearranged the home screen so that it has all the features of PHPBB Circa 2015 before we had to turn some of those options off because they ate CPU for breakfast on PHPBB. Xenforo handles this a lot better.

I'm done for the month.. next week is going to be crazy with my IT clients!
Anyway, here's where we are at in the bird's eye view:
  • The content processor is coming along and we now have ChatGPT writing some of the regex for us to make the job easier.. way cool :cool:
    No real ETA on that yet but we will be asking for a couple member's eyeballs to help vet the process once it is finished.
  • Search has improved a bit but next month i am going to roll out Xenforo's "enhanced search". This is said to improve search very significantly.
  • After that we're going to update the forum software.
  • All other fixes happen by priority after that.
  • Once the fundamentals are covered let's talk about adding a knowledgebase and also using xensifter to help recategorize the forum.
 
Last edited:
One last thing!
I restored many of the fields from PHPBB in the messages display..

Also, new users are required to enter the location field now.
 
Made a couple tweaks today.

+ We have a 'thread starter' indicator thanks to a plugin.
+ Posts are narrower on desktop for easier reading ( less left-right ) and less scrolling
+ Post editing box is the width of the post view now; for easier reading/writing also
+ Improved the 'click here to expand..' text on quotes
+ Made automatic links look different ( white ) than quotes ( tannish ) so they're more obvious
+ Fixed some elements that had the same color link as the background ( ouch )

Enjoy!
 
We have dark mode now:

See the tips and tricks thread:
ES 2.0 Forum Tips and Tricks

This theme doesn't contain numerous edits by me and is raw and slightly different.
Let me know what you think of this dark mode theme. If it's a keeper, i will put time into normalizing the look between the two themes.
 
Could the default image view be changed to expanded?
I have a ultra-wide screen and the thumbnails bar takes up a sizable chunk of the screen.
I know that I can change it by clicking the thumbnail icon but I'd like it to be default.
 
neptronix said:
We have dark mode now:

See the tips and tricks thread:
ES 2.0 Forum Tips and Tricks

This theme doesn't contain numerous edits by me and is raw and slightly different.
Let me know what you think of this dark mode theme. If it's a keeper, i will put time into normalizing the look between the two themes.
Click to expand...
Thanks, it is kind to eyes.

Differentiating between unread & read threads/forums cannot be done quickly as in default theme.
 
This isn't a problem, but is an inconsistency I noticed. Sometimes inconsistencies (when it comes to programming) may provide clues on other issues. The observation is regarding the "Last seen" date that appears next to most, but not all member's profiles. I thought possibly that if the member had not logged in since the upgrade, then there might not be a date, but I see 2022 last seen dates, so that's not the case. I also guessed that it might be staff member vs. forum member, but that's not the case either. It seems random for the folks that don't have a last seen date, so I'm geeking out trying to figure out why. Perhaps this has been brought up, but the search tool didn't like searching on "last seen".
 
eee291 said:
Could the default image view be changed to expanded?
I have a ultra-wide screen and the thumbnails bar takes up a sizable chunk of the screen.
I know that I can change it by clicking the thumbnail icon but I'd like it to be default.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. That's up for improvement in the next round of CSS wrenching.
I have two 27" 1440p monitors side by side here and can definitely reproduce the test case :bigthumb:

E-HP said:
This isn't a problem, but is an inconsistency I noticed. Sometimes inconsistencies (when it comes to programming) may provide clues on other issues. The observation is regarding the "Last seen" date that appears next to most, but not all member's profiles. I thought possibly that if the member had not logged in since the upgrade, then there might not be a date, but I see 2022 last seen dates, so that's not the case. I also guessed that it might be staff member vs. forum member, but that's not the case either. It seems random for the folks that don't have a last seen date, so I'm geeking out trying to figure out why. Perhaps this has been brought up, but the search tool didn't like searching on "last seen".
Click to expand...

This is Xenforo engine stuff because it uses layers of caching to improve the performance in a dramatic way.
There seems to be a 1-3 second delay in some information being updated, and this causes an array of weird behaviors we don't expect because we used to have a 100% realtime, basically no cache system.

One day we are going to dig into this and see if we can dramatically shorten the cache lag as to return this 'realtimeness'.

afzal said:
Thanks, it is kind to eyes.

Differentiating between unread & read threads/forums cannot be done quickly as in default theme.
Click to expand...

Glad you like it. I agree it could use a tune. Will get to it on the next round of CSS wrenching also.
 
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