A shambles! Heavens to Betsy!

Yes, IMO, a shambles. I can give you examples, if you are interested.

But then I have come to expect you to disagree with any opinion of mine.

I'll just add my .02 that I'd much rather have a slow board with search than a fast board where search is disabled. Google is NOT the be all end all - it works marginally well at best, and at worst it's just frustrating and useless - just like not having a search function that works.

I've seen FT over the last few days behave just as slowly as it did when search was working, and reports of slowness are so subjective - it could be a slow dialup connection or a plethora of other things that FT has zero control over.

I'm not exactly sure how speed over search won out, but I'd ask folks to re-evaluate that decision, especially when there's no timetable for it to return.

One of the best assets of FT is its vast expanse of historical information - information that we cannot easily access right now. It's like putting a drive thru window on the Library of Congress - yeah, you can get to some stuff, but you really need to search inside to appreciate the true value of what it has to offer.

- T

I couldn't have said it better myself. ^

Obviously this would not be a topic if the PHP fixes had been released as we and many other board hosts wished. We all have our own opinions and decisions on things like this, go left or go right. Bunt or swing for the fences. Go for the win or go for the tie. I would only hope that anyone with an opinion on this has read enough to know that there is clearly no vast majority of opinion.

In reality, we have decided a path that serves both - leaving the board fast(er) and still making search available to members, via our moderator staff. Should you have a specific topic in mind during this period, let me or another moderator know what you are looking for and we'll do our best to find it and provide you with the results.

You can be assured that once PHP gets a speed/security fix available we'll have it installed and once again open up search.

Thanks for your attention to this issue.

Here's hoping that the fix happens sooner, rather than later. I never realized how valuable the search feature was until it went on hiatus.

Cactus, Tony:
this thread caught my eye when it popped up on the front page yesterday. When i was reading through it, something caught my eye. I'm sure glad we're in the position we are in regarding the moves we made to fix the security hole in PHP when we did or as you have seen from ScottC's experience with other PHP driven Web sites, and this one here..... we have not been hacked like the others and while the issue has slowed down FT on a temporary basis, i feel good that we haven't had to face these other types of problems which would have certainly been far more damaging.

We'll continue to watch daily for the PHP fix to be released and you can guess that no one would be happier than I.

Randy


Read this post:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=410713

I'll nominate this as one of the dumbest technical replies I've seen on here in a long time. This sounds suspiciously like someone saying 'look, look, this is a problem only I know about, listen to me'.

I do know how large a database a site like this entails, ... and if someone is paying you for advice like what you said above ("it takes more than a day to restore...") here are two thoughts: 1.) You've got an excellent client/employer in that you've certainly got them fooled so if they keep paying you for advice like this that's great...for you, and 2.) (more seriously) they, or you, need to find someone with the right skill set for the particular database in question. Unless you're Visa, Mastercard, or the IRS, with multi tera-byte sized databases, it will never take 'days' to restore when done correctly. Never.

WOW... one of the rudest replies I have read here in a long long time, not to mention full of inaccuracies, and that from someone with a whopping 5 posts to their name.

Quantity doesn't equate to quality -- maybe if you have something to prove, it does. I've read your replies on here for a while now, and you're just off base on lots of technical issues, but this one takes the prize.

This is true. Having no FT search function REALLY SUCKS
Tattikat2

I'm not sure what was wrong with the "old" search function. OK, it wasn't perfect, but at least you could find things. Maybe it slows FlyerTalk down, but like another poster noted, I would prefer a slower FlyerTalk with search than a faster one without search.

The google search is simply not an effective alternative. I've followed all the guidance provided and tried several searches. Seems that the google search is not exactly up to date and it returns questionable, and limited, results.....at least in my experience.

My last resort now is too post additional questions to the forums, questions which have likely been answered previously.

Me thinks we have a candidate for IP Logging.

Wow! One of the rare occasions when I agree with you!

It's pretty depressing how far downhill FT has gone without a search function. The repetition is just staggering. It was problematic before; now it's destroying some of the forums. Take a look at the Starwood forum, for example. Seems like there are brand new threads asking about the NYC Starwood hotels every day (OK, maybe an exaggeration, but not that far wrong), as well as on a host of other well-worn topics. How many hundreds of separate threads on essentially the same topic do we need, anyhow?

As for the moderators helping by doing a search (which they still have access to), very few of them do that. (In some cases, I wonder if the moderator even knows how to use the FT search function. Maybe a little tutorial would help.) My impression is that most moderators act as police officers, trying to prevent or end flame wars and off-topic ramblings, more than anything else; there are notable exceptions, of course!!!

Have you asked a moderator to search for you and been turned down or ignored?

I've gotten several requests from members to do searches for them. I've done so fairly quickly, and I think I also did a pretty good job in each case culling down the results to the threads most relevant to their questions. In each case the customer seemed satisfied.

If there's a search you'd like help with, feel free to PM me.

Btw, I've posted some search results on threads where doing so seemed germaine. But mostly I've just replied to requests when asked.