I am assuming that this hasn't been posted yet (unless it happened in the last 20 minutes and didn't turn up in the search).
Can't say I missed it, but I know many of you will now heave a huge sigh of relief.
Hampster related news here.

Yay……… seriously……. YAY 🙂

YAY!

Thank fricken god, it was causing me loads of stress, even had a thread about it.. no matter what I did I couldn't get the google search to work well.

yeah i couldnt get on with google either, welcome back forum search-pipe and slippers where you left em old bean

People who use "Simples" Should be culled

No Exceptions – Sorry Tom

*Loads gun*

Old Hammie's looking good…

Hound- I have to disagree, as someone who has downloaded the free comparethemarket.com app to his iPod touch I have to say "simples" is the least of the crimes 🙂

Why do people continually spell HAMSTER with a P in the middle?

Do you pronounce it hamPster?

Or has it bred with a hamPer?

PP, just pretend it's an homage to Andy Hampsten.

the hamster told me to say it.

Cheers admins, that's much better

Thanks, much more usable 🙂

It's usable whereas Google was not. Tom: how are you getting around the problem of maxing-out the server?

*Loads gun*

Never aim a loaded gun at a man armed with iptables. 😮

We are basically using some replication, which means the search searches a different table than the one being posted to. The posts get copied over to the searchable bit, currently every 20 minutes and people can search that copy for 'mtb' all they want (yes they do that, lots) without any INSERTs getting in the way. This replication prevents the table locking that used to give rise to the occasional shonky database connection errors as the queue of read threads became overwhelming. We've used a variety of workarounds before, but this time it's a fairly solid fix.

Welcome.
more details of the defeated problem

WOW! Who said IT was boring. 😯

Thank you Tom db 🙂

Good job Tom

I'm missing from the drop down user listing!

Does the list come from your original username and you have changed yours? Possibly?
Or have you upset Tom at some point?

I had the same issue when trying to look for "undapressure" posts, not listed in the drop down menu.

The user list is currently restricted to the first 3,000 users, otherwise the list would be even more huge (nearly 1Mb by my calculations). I'll see what can be done, but it's a bit of a sensible default limit. You can always see what a user's posted by looking at their profile.

Big improvement. Ta.

You can always see what a user's posted by looking at their profile.

Yes but I wanted to search his posts… looking for some info on item he was offering for sale.

Obvious question that has to be ask (even if the answer is obvious to you…), why can you not just enter the user's name as another search field, without listing the registered users?

EDIT: Still very happy to have it back ❗

Simple but equally obvious answer: because that's the way it was written. The issue has been noted; we'll take a look at how it can be improved. It'll require some meditation.

Hell yeah!

Having meditated I can announce that anyone who has posted recently is now in the list 😀 It doesn't display every user we have, and z1ppy's suggestion hasn't been implemented, but that'll be one of those longer term projects we can look forward to.

Good work Tom.

fair enuff 🙂

Car inshoooorance!