Originally Posted by Kremmen
I'm not saying that you're bungling idiots, but I do believe that you made the wrong decision. I spent 10 mins trying to find a post through google yesterday and gave up. FT search would have taken a few seconds. Given the choice between the whole system taking twice, or even 10 times, as long vs. search via google taking 1000 times longer or being impossible, I'd opt for the former without hesitation.
If the performance impact of searches is such a big deal, how about a restricted version? Searching for recent posts and ones own posts would cover a lot of what people do that google can't do, while not providing the usual full-blown search facility.
The problem isn't that SEARCH takes so long, it is that the load search puts on the board brings the entire board to a halt. Certain types of searches actually make the database crash and rendering the board useless for several minutes.
Search complaints have been posted by 10 or so members, but with an unusable board 40000+ members get impacted. I think its a small price to pay for a board that runs, it isn't like search is gone for good, it will be back soon enough...