Options Manager -- Keyword & Date Search

These options are set from the Other tab of the Options Manager interface.

Keyword & Date Search Options Overview

The integrated keyword and date search utility in the user interface is configured using these options. With your configuration here, you will establish security settings as well as control the number of results per page in search results. Most users will find the defaults to be sufficient, but busier boards may wish to alter some of these settings.

Search Cache Security

When a user performs a search, Discus creates a "cache" of that search result on the server so that accessing subsequent pages of that same search will not be a processor-intensive operation. The cache system speeds up the performance of a board dramatically.

Verify user's identification when using cached results: If checked, the aforementioned cache option will check the IP address of the client accessing the search result against the IP address from which the result was originally created. This security check will cause problems for people accessing the internet through certain Internet Service Providers that use multiple proxies to connect their customers (AOL is one such ISP). In such cases, the customer, although they are using the same computer, will have no control over the fact that they come in from multiple IP addresses.

If this security check is not enabled, it is possible that someone else could enter a specially crafted URL and access a search created by someone else, where that original searcher has more privileges than the other visitor. This would enable the other visitor to view search results from private topics to which that visitor would not normally have access. However, the chances of this being exploited are very rare, as the visitor would have to accurately guess a number that is generally over 10 characters long in order to view the cache.

This option is disabled by default, and DiscusWare recommends that it remain disabled unless a board has ultra-sensitive content in private reading areas and/or the board administrator is convinced that nobody connects to the board through web proxies such as those described above.

Keyword Searching Options

Limit the number of linked pages returned from search: If checked, and a number is supplied into the box, the search engine will stop searching when it has found the requested number of links. Note that this option tells the search engine to stop looking when it reaches the threshold. Specifically this option does NOT search for all results, rank them (by date or relevancy), and then return the best N matches. If you do use this, give a high number for the maximum, to keep the search engine from becoming useless.

Limit the number of search results per page: If checked, the number of search results per page will be limited to the number you specify. This is generally a very good idea, as it is very standard and friendly to split the search results up across several screens rather than simply returning one huge page with all results. The default of 15 seems to be a good choice.

Allow overrides via form rpp variable: Advanced administrators can check this box and then add "rpp=N" to URLs from the search engine to create pages with a different number of results per page. If you are not planning to do extensive template editing or interface creation, leave this box unchecked.

Block "stop words" from being indexed by search engine: In order to keep the size of the search engine index down, common "stop words" are removed before the results are stored. Examples of words removed are "the" and "and" and "by" -- very common words that would add no value to a search. The "stop words" are contained in the stopwords.conf file. DiscusWare recommends leaving this checked, unless your posters are submitting messages in a non-English language for which searching becomes broken if this option is enabled (or if you have absolutely infinite disk space).

By Date or Author Searching

Searches by date or by author are returned in a "tree" view which focuses on the author's name and the positioning of the post within the discussion board structure. With many results, this "tree" can be very large, and consequently slow to load, so Discus provides the ability to display this tree in a "collapsed" state. Users can then expand branches of the tree that most interest them. The following options give control over the presentation of these search results.

Always display all topics expanded: If checked, Discus will behave like versions 3.10 and before, and not ever use the "collapse" function to reduce the size of the tree. You can enable this box if your board receives very little activity, or if your users were used to the "old" way in version 3.10 and get upset with you.

Show post dates in by-date searches: If checked, "by date" search results will display the date and time of the post within the tree. This is mainly a cosmetic option that does not affect performance substantially. Choose whatever best suits your preferences.

Expand all topics when there are <= ___ results: This is useful to avoid presenting a collapsed tree if there are very few results. As you would expect, if there are fewer than the number of search results that you specify, there will be no collapsing of the tree. A good setting here is to check the check box and enter 100 into the text box.

Expand first topic only when there are <= ___ results: This setting takes effect if there are fewer than the number of results you specify, but more than the number of results from the previous item. As the wording indicates, if this condition is met, the first topic will be expanded, but all subsequent topics will be collapsed. A good setting here is to check the check box and enter 300 into the text box.

Stop searching when at least ___ results are found: This works similarly to the "Limit the number of linked pages returned from search" option as described above, but the present option affects searches by date. Unless you have a huge number of posts, you can generally leave this unchecked. A good number if you do check this box is 1000, although this may vary depending on your needs and your expand/collapse settings.