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Originally Posted by Skatiechik  Right I managed to get myself suspended at the weekend for pressing a button in the ACP control panel on phpBB after upgrading to phpBB 3.  My fault for blindly pressing buttons without full understanding. It was to do with the search indexing. |
This is a regularly reported problem.
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Originally Posted by Skatiechik Now from posting on the phpBB forum and some discussions via the ticket system with Matt I understand it is to do with the number of sql queries the search indexing executes within a set time frame. |
Yes, this is correct. That and the incredibly intensive process that is indexing a very large database of text entries.
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Originally Posted by Skatiechik However I don't know how to limit the number of queries it makes. It might help if I understand fully how the search indexing works, I haven't been able to find any info on this. |
Limiting the number of queries isn't possible without modifying the phpBB script. Understanding how it works would help you to do this but then doing it would also help you to understand the script
In short I don't recommend trying to do this because you admit to being a novice and this is not something many who call themselves experts would want to do. phpBB have coded their script the way they have for a reason and it has gone through 3rd party testing and passed so they must be doing something right, or at the very least, necessary.
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Originally Posted by Skatiechik Also what is the difference between the sql search, and the full text native search. What are the pros and cons between the two. I choose to do full text native search at the weekend as from what I understood this is how phpBB2 worked. |
Firstly, yes, phpBB2 did use this search method. I'll explain the difference but if you don't get it, please try a google or two - I'm not great at explaining things like this.
A full text native search gathers words from a persons post at the point it is edited. It stores these words in a database along with the post id it came from, the topic it was in and other data. If the word was already in the index, it simply adds the extra post id etc to the existing entry. What this means is that when you do a search you simply have to query one table and you get back a list if locations where the word(s) reside. Searching isn't in this case very server intensive.
SQL search works differently. In basic form, no indexing is done, and at the point of search, every post is searched through to find the search terms. This is clearly very server intensive and rather silly so to improve this process the indexing is done by the database server. I won't go into how this works but what it *essentially* does is enable the same sql search query to be used but makes it faster and more efficient as it draws on a server side index. If you want to know more I recommend going to your library and getting a book out on databases.
In terms of choosing one, both will work fine for you. They will both take time to complete. They will both cause server load. There are performance differences in terms of users performing searches that you should research on the phpBB forums and elsewhere if you are really bothered.
As a quick solution to "which do I choose?" though, the one you picked should be just fine
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Originally Posted by Skatiechik So how do I limit the number of queries the search indexing tries to do, so I can restart it from the ACP. |
As above, you can't really.
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Originally Posted by Skatiechik Or alternatively is it better for me.....
Close the forums again
Export the database
Install the database on my local webserver
Run the search indexng
Export the database and re-import back to Xilo. |
I would *highly* recommend doing this. I would never attempt to do a migration on a production server, which by running a search index on your reseller account, is essentially what you are trying to do.
Install a local webserver on your PC with PHP and MySQL, get phpBB up and running, convert your 2.0.x board to 3.0.x and then run anything you need to run. Check it works, then dump the files, dump the database and move it over to your reseller account.
You can use as many resources you want/need and can be sure the result is safe and works before you put it on a shared server.
If you feel you can't do this you can always pay someone to do it for you. There are many folks around that can do this kind of thing.
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Originally Posted by Skatiechik I am a bit dubious on the latter as I am not sure how different webserver set-ups will affect the database tables? I think the local webserver I have (xampp) is running mysql 4 and the one on Xilo is mysl5. |
In theory this shouldn't matter but in practice it just might do. You should try to setup your local webserver in as close a way as possible to your production environment (your reseller account).
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Originally Posted by Skatiechik This is only the first forum of four which I have upgraded so far and it is by far the smallest. |
Follow the advice above for all of them and you should be fine
I know this can seem daunting but if you take it one step at a time then you will find its actually not all that bad. Ask for help if you are not sure and always make sure you take backups of data before tinkering and doing conversions.