SolarChat!

You may have noticed that there is no longer a search bar internal to the forum.
In order to have an internal search engine, the forum contents are indexed and additional database space is used that is the same size as the text in the forum. This is what is searched.

Last month we reached the maximum usage of the largest database that can be purchased through our host Network Solutions. The options were to archive older posts, delete older posts, or just remove the internal search engine which is what I did. This gave us 50% free space in the database and hopefully 10 more years of space.

it is just as easy and probably more accurate to simply use your favorite search engine externally to search for posts in this forum. We have search crawlers and bots on here 24 hours a day making their own indexes of our contents for your favorite search engines.

If you type the phrase “Solarchat” followed by whatever topic or term you are looking for, you will get dozens of responses in your search engine which you can then click and it will take you right to the post.

The below image are the results from me typing “Solarchat Daystar Quark” into my Google search engine.
If someone has a better idea and is willing to pay for this idea to be implemented or if someone just wants to take over the forum and run it themselves anyway they like, please let me know.

Sounds a sensible idea Stephen.

In case of Google (and similarly other engines, I imagine) there's the function to search a particular website only; for our case, use:

Many thanks Stephen for your efforts.

Terry

Thanks Stephen! Your efforts are appreciated here.

This seems to be a very reasonable compromise to keep space available.

Brian

Hi,

Some thoughts:

A big reason the space is enormous is due to hosting images (large GIFs especially) and any video. From a pure text stand point, the data size is small even when duplicated for backups, etc. If size constraints are a problem, consider to stop hosting images and instead just require people host their own images and embed or link to them; many people do this already anyways. People can host on IMGUR, Flickr, Astrobin, etc since they're already doing this mostly.

Killing the search capabilities of the text in the forum is more detrimental to the actual information people are searching for, than removing hosting of images and media. Few people search for a specific image or need images from 10+ years ago. But there's plenty of information in text form that is critical and important that is very old, and finding that information is more important than finding an image. Sure, one can just point google or another search engine at the forum (if its been recently indexed by the search engine, this doesn't work otherwise) to find some things and it does work. It just seems that turning this off to have old images that are hosted that are not searched up by users (just search index bots usually) favors one thing when the most important stuff here is the information in text form.

As for stopping spam, the only form of spam that will show up is in the form of a user-bot that then posts. These can be completely nullified a two step process of 1) human data input as part of the registration (such as to reach a passage and answer a question, or simply describe why you are joining, etc) followed by 2) user accounts are activated by a mod/admin so that they're reviewed before they're given the ability to post. There's no "pay for security" involved with this part. Ad spam is abased on having ads, which are not present here, so that's a non-issue.

The data base would be tiny.
There would be minimal/no issues with bots (just index bots from search engines as guests crawling the forum).
The costs would be low. Just basic hosting services and backup services.

Very best,

MalVeauX wrote: ↑Sat Oct 16, 2021 7:13 pm Few people search for a specific image or need images from 10+ years ago. But there's plenty of information in text form that is critical and important that is very old, and finding that information is more important than finding an image.

I must disagree. Images are not only the "today's full disc" or "another take on sunspot XYZ, day 10", but also irreplaceable things like "here are the results of disassembly and analysis of gear X", "my adapters to make mod Y", "my spectrum of filter Z", "astrophotography results with different settings" etc. Making people host these on external sites just won't work, the links will go dead, services go out of business/switch to fully-paid accounts, people lose interest and delete their profiles etc., etc. I think it's hugely important that I can look up a 10-year old telescope mod and have all the data still in one place; the optical/mechanical things don't become outdated quickly.

I totally agree with you Filipp /GreatAttractor and to loose any archives containing information for those of us that want to find-out about what has happened in the past for mods etc., is very important.

Unfortunately the storage space required - does cost money to keep these files and their images in one place/SolarChat. This has not been sufficiently forthcoming of recent, so again, for us to be able to go back in time to see such info, does require sufficient-donations to allow this to happen...

Best Wishes
Terry

Filip, where do you find 'Code select all' in Google?

Alexandra