can I search more than 120 posts by a user?

Hi. Can I search more than 120 posts by a user? If I press in a user profile “find all posts by a user” it shows only 120 of them. Why is such a limitation? Thank you.

I believe the limitation is there to limit bandwidth usage. I may be wrong.

You can go to Google and do an advanced search on the username. It may give you more results. For example …

Google search “mister3d site:forums.cgsociety.org” returned 512 results.

Thank you Kirt. Though it’s still doesn’t show all the posts… pity, it would be interesting whether it can be fixed.

Hey starving-artist …
Do that here.

Thanks.

Actually - with most things search related it’s a CPU thing. vBulletin’s search functionality is good for a smaller site (like Game-Artist.net) but really large forums like CGTalk show how poorly it scales.

Unfortunately, it’s not just a matter of finding all the posts by a user, you have to find all the posts, check to see if you have permission to see them, then check to see if they’ve been deleted, and usually do one or two other miscellaneous things. It puts a real strain on the database. Which is why we’ve got it tuned back somewhat.

whoops, sorry kirt thought i was in the right spot.

The restriction to 120 post per search is a good way to stop freezing the whole search system. What I miss is an option to define a time range in which I want my search placed.
A normal database request like:

show all post with the word "polygon" from 21.02.2003 to 24.02.2003

I’ve started a little analysis about the CG Choice Award Gallery and wanted to extend this little research through results from the Showcase Gallery 3D Stills. For detailed information please see the thread CG CHOICE AWARD - Gallery Statistic for automotive.

   Without a propper search it will be hard to get some results in an arguable amount of time. The search offers the restriction to a special forum, a special user and even some pre defined time ranges. But thats not enough for the questions I want to answer with the search.
  
  Is there a way to define a timerange for the search? The google search isn't an alternative because I will judge search results with the preview image I get when I search within the 3D Stills gallery.

Whilst I agree that this would be a nice feature, in the end it comes back to a performance issue. If we give people the freedom to select from x to y date, there’s the potential for performing server-killing queries. Our first and foremost priority is to keep the site running at all costs, so we will not risk allowing this functionality to be used.

What about restricting the maximum size of the time range? A maximum timerange with maybe 30, 100 or 365 days…

Still potentially server killing queries there. Do you know how many posts we get in 30 days ?

Searching by date instantly exponentially increases the amount of search criteria - currently the system just finds the first or last set of posts that contain a value. If you do a date-range search, you have to check every single posts date, then check if it meets the criteria. It’s a huge task.

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