completed How exactly does "Enable Full Text Search" work?

The help tip for this checkbox in the Search module says:
"Enabling this option will activate a special Full Text search index for modules - a Full Text search can do a better job of finding relevant items when performing a search of textual data."

Sounds swell!- but I'm not sure how this actually translates into reality. I'm not seeing or pinpointing the difference when i'm testing it both on and off.

Can someone give a couple of simple 'real world' scenarios of how searches would work when this "Full text search" option is enabled vs. disabled? That'd help me to understand whether I should have in on or off. Thanks!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 05/17/15 07:29:40AM

So the full text index enables what are called "boolean" searches, which allows you to use AND and OR in your search conditions - i.e.

red AND blue

would find entries that had BOTH "red" and "blue" in them. That will not work with the default search as it would look explicitly for "red AND blue".

It also enables a "rating" on the matched search terms - i.e. it checks on the "density" of the keywords you are looking for, so ideally the most relevant matches are at the very top.

Hope this helps!


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Thanks, sounds like generally a good thing then.
Do the words AND and OR need to be capitalized?
Does it also recognize plus and minus, as in searching for "sheet music -guitar" or "teacher +fingerstyle" ?

I have another search question, but will post it in a new thread.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 04/15/15 11:20:12AM

no - I don't think they need to be capitalized, and yes - it supports the + and - indicators. Note too that you can enclose the search term in quotes for an exact match.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Ok i get it- thanks!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Thanks Strumelia and Brian,

I have been wondering where controls for search might be.

When I searched for "search module" in the jamroom marketplace, nothing came up until I tried the Installed tab. Then I could learn that it is already installed by default as part of jamroom core.

However, in ACP, no search module appears as an obvious, distinct module. What we see when we look at the "Core" are:

1. Marketplace,
2. Support Center,
3. System Core,
4. System Tips.

To find the search module components I did a search on "search" in the search box at top of the ACP module menu, and was rewarded with a list of four modules each dealing with a different aspect of the search system:

1. Additional Search Fields
2. Enable Full Text Search
3. Index Result Count
4. Module Result Count

I could not find these with a jamroom.net site-wide global search, nor with the menu tab navigation. But Strumelia's question does come up in the site-wide search, so maybe this explanation of where to find the Search module(s) and their functions will also be visible to others, from now on.

Thanks.

ps After dabbling further with searches on search in documentation, I found this great video on how to add a search box in a widget (i.e. on any page we want): http://www.jamroom.net/site-builder/documentation/howto/2391/how-to-add-a-search-box-in-a-widget

And there it is revealed that to find the documentation for search, we should use the term "jrsearch", not just "search".

Here is the documentation:

http://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/documentation/modules/950/search

Is adding the letters jr a magic key for finding key information abut jr, inside jr itself?


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)
updated by @researchcooperative: 04/16/15 06:40:32AM

PJ, if you simply click on the ACP top link itself (rather than the drop down items) then you'll be on your core/admin/global page. There, you'll see the left side column with two tabs: Skins and Modules. You will find all your installed modules there- and Search module is under "Listing" when in the modules tab.
Another useful page to bookmark is your /marketplace/browse page, where you can find all the modules available to you, plus notice the tabs for "installed" and "system updates".

Personally, I found the module "Admin Hover Menu" to be incredibly handy, and I have it installed. It puts a strip of quick-access admin links accross the top of your window wherever you are on your site, and makes things like Marketplace, tools, and modules really fast to get to. Give it a try, you can always uninstall it if you don't like it. I love it!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

When you search inside the ACP, 3 areas are searched:

1) Module names - in this case you will see "search" is listed as a module if you search for "search"

2) Global Config items - this will find the word "search" in Global Config options

3) Tools - if there was a tool that had "search" in it's name, you would see it as well.

I've outlined in my screenshot what you will see - I think it is intuitive and am not sure how to make it more clear, but feedback is welcome.

Thanks!


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net
updated by @brian: 04/16/15 12:21:49PM

Thanks for the screenshot. That all shows up in my case too, so no problem there. And now I understand how the ACP search box has been set up.

This ability to configure search boxes for any combination of areas within a jr Network will indeed be very useful for me.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)