SitePoint Search

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I’m happy to announce the first public launch of my pet project: SitePoint Search.

This is a Diffbot machine learning powered engine that extracted structured data from SitePoint’s content over the years and turned it into searchable information. More fields, examples, etc are coming soon, as well as tutorials on how the whole things was put together. If you’d like to help out, there’s some open issues and the code sure could use some cleaning up, but all in all, it’s ready to be used, it’ll only get better from now on.

Hope you find it useful! In time, if there’s enough interest, I’ll make a forum search mode, too. Discourse search really does leave something to be desired.

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First issue (I think), the top of the page looks to be disappearing under the toolbar in IE11 on Win7

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TBH all the CSS issues seem to stem from him not providing all the required prefixes for flexbox. I’m more than willing to work with Bruno to get this page up and working :slight_smile: .

IE10 will break as well, as I don’t seem to see any Tweener syntax in there (not that I looked much - just what I saw in Firebug.)

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Hmm - while flexbox is an actual issue (not providing the proper prefixes) it seems the main issue that IE11 has is that you can’t have 100vh min-height on the body element alone. Seems to be tripping up on that. Adding this in seems to get IE11 working.

html,body{height:100%;}

Still need prefix work though. Wherever you do display:flex, you need these prefixes here.

display: -webkit-box;
  display: -moz-box;
  display: -ms-flexbox;
  display: -moz-flex;
  display: -webkit-flex;
  display: flex;

Note the display:flex at the end to override the prefix when possible.

You have the shorthand “flex” property there. You have flex:1 1 0%; Add these in for added browser support.

-webkit-box-flex: 1 1 0%;
  -moz-box-flex: 1 1 0%;
  -webkit-flex: 1 1 0%;
  -ms-flex: 1 1 0%;
  flex: 1 1 0%;

Note the regular flex at the end.

Again, the html,body{} rule will fix IE11 since that’s the main issue, but these prefixes will be required if you want IE10 to use flexbox properly.

IE9 does have no flexbox support though so perhaps that “upgrade browser” message should be changed to reflect IE9 as well? Food for thought. If you do want to do that, then you can change that IE conditional to just read “if IE” since IE9 is the last IE to use conditionals so any IE that reads that will automatically be IE9 and down.

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Excellent project @swader.

I love Discourse, but

Discourse search really does leave something to be desired.

is definitely the case, so hopefully this project gains enough traction to get a forums version done too :wink: but we have enough articles on SP that’s it will be quite useful there too.

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I wouldn’t waste a lot of effort on Discourse Search, when it is getting full page search in the next release or two.

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The problem with that is that it’s still the same search, just on a full page. Enough for rudimentary searches, but anything advanced will be unsearchable, as is usually the case with forums.

No worries anyhow - modifying the search to incorporate forums would take under a day, it’s all ML anyway. The biggest time expense would actually be waiting for the crawl to finish.

Thanks, I haven’t even tested on IE. I frankly don’t care enough about IE users to spend any time on them on projects I’m not paid for, plus I suck at front end (obviously) so really appreciate the help. Will take a look at implementing all the front end fixes as soon as I handle the back end bugs.

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Huh. I broke it (Sorry). I searched for my username and got a big pile of…nothing. Completely empty screen - view source even shows nada.

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This is why we can’t have nice things.

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Heard that a lot as a kid, huh? (I’ve told my kids that too many times…)

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No, it isn’t simply just full page, it will have a lot of advanced features with it that are unsuitable in the small window it gets today.

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Interesting! Details?

Already on that, yeah : )

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I did some quick searches, the problem is, it is spread about many topics around Search on Meta. When they start to really focus on the feature they will likely create a topic about it to consolidate the various things thrown about (I could then indicate it at that point).

I know @system has big plans for the full page search though. It may not all happen in 1.4, but it wouldn’t surprise me if any remainder occurs in 1.5 or 1.6

Another thing to note that the information provided to crawlers will lack a lot of the advanced things they want to permit in Discourse. Things that can only be obtained through data stored internally or related to a given user who is performing the search.

There are actually a few advanced features in search now (if you know where to look at how to interact with them), that is one piece full page search will hopefully resolve and make easier for most users to find/identify.

I’m sure your search will do fine, but I’m fairly certain in claiming it won’t be able to do all of the advanced search capabilities Discourse is currently considering.

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Ah, indeed. Mine would be content only, no relationships and internal data that may affect results.

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As a kid?

I still hear that to this day. I’m a child-like adult.

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Fixed blank page crash @DaveMaxwell. Note that the app searches by full name, no username.

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Mmm, nope, this breaks it in Chrome.

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Screenshot? It doesn’t for me.

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Local copy. Chrome + tools open.

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The problems occur on the results page, the home page is fine. The footer gets stuck in position, and the page scrolls under it, and the main page heading “SitePoint search” at the top is in the wrong position relative to other elements.

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