Searchable content

[DmitrySoshnikov]

Search notes and topics.

[dignifiedquire]

@ForbesLindesay what's the idea here? I see two options atm

• Add text indices to mongo
• Parse the output of queries of this form http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]&a=1&haswords=%22haskell%22.

[ForbesLindesay]

I think this original request may have come from before we were actually serving any content that was indexable by google etc. so it's probably less needed than it was. I hadn't come across that mail-archive search facility. It does look like it does a pretty good job of finding the messages so we could parse that output (as long as that doesn't breach anybody's terms of service?). I'm equally fine with adding indexes to the database if you think that's a better bet?

Do we think lots of people would use this? I would imagine most people just google for stuff.

[domenic]

Maybe just one of those google search boxes that does site:esdiscuss.org would work well?

[dignifiedquire]

Maybe just one of those google search boxes that does site:esdiscuss.org would work well?

I think that would be nice and probably enough.
My main use case was that I'm trying to read upon specific things and I went back to the mail-archive search because it was much more convenient to search, but then I had lost all the niceness of esdiscuss

[ForbesLindesay]

I think that would probably do nicely :)

If we keep track of how much usage it gets we'll know whether it's a feature worth spending time on.

[xfq]

I created a Google Custom Search: https://www.google.com/cse/publicurl?cx=000975054233003290149:llp-exbajta

[jasonwilliams]

I agree, maybe adding a google search box to the site would help!

[karlhorky]

Yeah a full-featured search (with separate page) would be a nice feature!

The current Algolia search box (seen below) is a good start but is limited and doesn't work on mobile:

[ForbesLindesay]

I'd be very happy to see a custom search page implemented, with support for more advanced filtering by author etc. PRs welcome :)

[karlhorky]

Sounds good, I'll take a look tomorrow if I get some time!