[wp-meta] [Making WordPress.org] #7: Search individual plugin/theme forums

[Making WordPress.org]

#7: Search individual plugin/theme forums
---------------------------------------+------------------
 Reporter:  Daedalon                   |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement                |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                     |   Milestone:
Component:  Support Forums             |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  needs-refresh 2nd-opinion  |
---------------------------------------+------------------

Comment (by Otto42):

 At this time, we do not have *any* search solutions available for large
 scale searching on WordPress.org.

 As you may have noticed, the main site search is a Google Custom Search,
 not something native to our system.

 Additionally, in the past, the forums were running older outdated versions
 of bbPress. Not very amenable to searching them.

 And while we have now updated the forums and the themes directory to run
 on WordPress itself, the built in search functionality for WordPress is
 not suitable for the scales we're talking about here. While the themes
 directory search works just fine on a few thousand themes, the Support
 forums has more than 6 *million* posts in it. WordPress' search simply
 doesn't scale that well.

 At this time, work is being done on the plugin directory and migrating it
 to WordPress. Now, as part of that process, search for plugins is being
 improved to use ElasticSearch. This required a fair amount of effort and
 help from our friends at Automattic, and they are currently working out
 problems of scaling for that.

 Once that new plugin directory launches, then we hope to be able to use
 some of that code and effort and experience gained to index the support
 forums as well. Then we'll be able to implement something like this.

 But it is slow going and we take things one step at a time. The lack of
 refined search is annoying, but it is not a usability deal-breaker at
 present. Getting the forums updated (done) and getting themes and plugins
 also updated (done and in-progress) are necessary first steps to do any
 further development. Search would not be possible without migrating these
 systems off of 10-year-old software.

 So yes, we know. We have not forgotten about this ticket or the needs of
 our systems. We're working on it.

--
Ticket URL: <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7#comment:35>
Making WordPress.org <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/>
Making WordPress.org