Found in: Addons → plugins

SphinxSearch 20130330

A much improved search experience with widgets based on the Sphinx Search Engine

You can now power your vanilla forum with Sphinx!. Sphinx is an open source full text search server, designed from the ground up with performance, relevance (aka search quality). Sphinx indexes up to 10-15 MB of text per second per single CPU core, that is 60+ MB/sec per server (on a dedicated indexing machine). This is the same engine that Craigslist uses to power their site which sees 50+ Million queries each day.

This plugin comes bundled with the sphinx search tarball and requires no knowledge to install everything. It comes with an install wizard to assist you.

Please see the github readme for much much more information: https://github.com/mcuhq/SphinxSearchPlugin

**IMPORTANT** Any versions before 20130214 Should seriously consider upgrading to at least this version. A major bug was fixed that stopped the default search from executing alongside the sphinx one.

demos:
http://homebrewforums.net/search?Search=beer
http://mcuhq.com/mcuhq/vanilla/search?Search=test&tar=srch

Here is a short photo album of the plugin: http://imgur.com/a/jQ5WE#1

Info about sphinx: http://sphinxsearch.com/about/sphinx/

Requirements:

Linux Only! (for now)
PHP >= 5.3.0
Shell Access
Spawn a Daemon (searchd)
Port Forwarding
Vanilla = v2.0.18.4
Enable URL Rewriting ($Configuration['Garden']['RewriteUrls'] = TRUE)



No backend knowledge is required to install this! Everything is done for you via the install wizard. It comes bundled with the build of the sphinx search engine. To install, run the install wizard and complete the **3** step process. If the wizard encounters any errors, it will tell you. If the installer package does not work on your server, you can perform a manual installation via your distro's package manager and then tell the wizard where to find your installed files.

To enable the plugin, simply download it from Vanilla Forum's plugin portal and move it to your webserver's plugin folder. Enable it from the dashboard. Some files need to be given write permissions by the installer:
* ~SphinxSearch/Install folder
* ~SphinxSearch/Install/pid/error/output.txt files


The install process allows you to run long tasks, such as *./configure* and *./make* in the background. While this is going on, the terminal output will be presented to you. This is also possible to do while indexing your indexes, which may take a long time depending on the amount of documents in the database.

After installation, do the following in the control panel:

1. Start searchd
2. index 'Main'
3. index 'Delta'
4. index 'Stats'
5. Stop and then start searchd again
6. Search for something on your forums through the usual means
7. Setup a cron job to run the three cron files
8. DELETE ALL FILES IN YOUR /cache folder!

Changelog

20130330

1. Whenever the advanced search is expanded, the div will stay collapsed for subsequent searches until it is toggled
2. Fixed a bug where the xx amount of search results were not being reconstructed back to their original ranking order from sphinx. This caused the results within each page to be mixed randomly!
3. Fixed a bug where sometimes the results will say "xx results found" but no results actually shown. This is because the default page landing was NOT being set correctly to 1. This is repeatable when a
   previous search on a large page number is then followed by a search that returns a few results on a smaller pagination scale than the previously viewed one. No results will be shown since the GET query string tells sphinx to return the previous search's offset
4. Instead of checking if sphinx is installed and ready, the plugin now forces the default search to ALWAYS be sphinx until the plugin is disabled. Any errors should now be spit out on any page that fetches a query from sphinx
5. Added a message indicating that apache may not have the correct read/write permissions

20130214

1. Fixed a HUGE bug that caused all sphinx searches to also perform a regular MYSQL "LIKE" search!
2. Put a big reminder about enabling pretty URL's in the dasbhoard
3. Added better debug messages during install wizard and reminders to turn on error reporting
4. Added a check to enforce Pretty URL's for the time being
5. Now sphinx escapes every search query. Check your charset
6. Added default charset for English/Russian
7. Added debug info to the main results page. Now Sphinx will spit out any errors in your face!
8. Fixed issue where regular users could would not see the suggested threads when starting a new thread
9. Fixed queries with any numeric character references in them
10. Added link to view stats cron in the install wizard
11. Added icon image of the sphinx eye
12. Added permissions check for related discussions o main/regular discussions view
13. Fixed incorect query string from '?q=' to '?Search=' in the Related threads box on main results page
14. Added option for different charsets in sphinx.conf template file
15. Added hbf as a live demo that is better than my site as well as link back to main plugin site to readme
16. Verified read permission in viewfile @Gillingham
17. Fixed example cron files that were not pointing to correct paths @Gillingham

20130105

1. Fixed search results not respecting user permissions (added another attribute to sphinx to filter on)
2. Updated release file to 2.0.6
3. Relocated definitions file to make it easier to edit
4. Deleted hard coded statements in config template that would override automatic settings set in plugin's settings page
5. Added more locale definitions to hitbox widget
6. Fixed incorrect query string in the results page. Any filtering done in the result page would only take affect for that single page! Now all pages are affected (fixed)
7. Fixed pagination results which would sometimes render blank results page. Now only 'MaxMatches' amount of results will be displayed (default is 1000 docs)
8. Fixed numerous spelling mistakes

20120912

1. deleted old debug stuff that caused fatal error when auto completing
2. fixed problem with php classes not included...now just include all files in root of plugin

20120905

1. Created temporary workaround that fixed non-Roman search phrases from being executed correctly
2. Fixed stats cron file location to its actual location
3. Fixed the RelatedPost widget from adding a query when it should not be
4. Added slight HTML edit to support traditional plugin/theme

20120807

1. Added debug table to control panel
2. Fixed cron files to index at common times - also corrected file paths and comments
3. Deleted "Reload Connections" button...it was useless

20120806

1. Added mysql_sock to config
2. Added mysql_db to config
3. Added localhost entry to wizard
4. Fixed FAQ link
5. Added an update entry to FAQ

20120805

1. Initial Release