I am working on the search issues. There have been a lot of updates to the search engine software we're using and that's caused some unexpected and unwanted changes on our website here. I'm working on that.

Partial word searches in the database should be working now. For example:

https://garden.org/plants/sear...

Indeed they are.

I just uploaded another big code update and all search engines across the site should be working properly now.

dave said: Partial word searches in the database should be working now. For example:

https://garden.org/plants/sear...

This is great news.

I just uploaded an update to the plants search engine. https://garden.org/plants/sear...

A weird thing started happening @Dave
When I search a genus, for example, Pinguicula,
The only things that show up are the Species, or the cultivars that have the species (i.e. Pinguicula agnata 'True Blue')
I can only see all the Genus-Cultivar when I click "see all plants in Pinguicula"

Can I get a link to the search page you're looking at @sedumzz ?

There's a TON of pinguicula that aren't cultivars of a species, and for some reason they don't appear when I search pinguicula;

https://garden.org/plants/sear...

The text search you linked to seems to be working like it should. It's a generalized search that tries to find the most popular plants that match your query. In this case, you're searching for a genus so it will return the most popular plants in that genus.

If you wanted to do a more detailed query to look for specific things in a specific order, you would go to the "View all plants in the genus" page and from there you can sort alphabetically.

I'm having a new search problem. If I search for a plant with lots of hits, I may get a pageful of results without getting *all* possible results for that search. I tried searching for Sempervivum arachnoideum, and I was looking for the species, not for one of the many cultivars.

I used to frequently have trouble finding the species when there were lots of cultivars, but even if I had 12 pages of results to sort through, I could usually find what I sought eventually. Now I'm only getting one page of results with no indication of how to access the additional 'pages' of search results.

Here is my screenshot:

Thanks @scvirginia I will get this resolved.

dave said: Thanks @scvirginia I will get this resolved.

For searches using the species as the search term[s], would it be possible to have the species always return as the first hit, or would that be ridiculously hard to program?

Could you give me an example of a species that you'd like to search, and what kind of result you'd want to see?

dave said: Could you give me an example of a species that you'd like to search, and what kind of result you'd want to see?

The species I was just looking for was Sempervivum arachnoides. If there are many cultivars, I will usually need to hunt for the species I want, sometimes through hundreds of hits. I often look for species by binomial name, and it would be nice if the first search results listed were the species, then any subspecies and cultivars, etc. Using my screenshot as an example, when I searched for Sempervivum arachnoides, the species would show up first instead of Sempervivum 'Mona Lisa'.

I think most people who are looking for a cultivar will search using the cv name if they know it, and if they just want to browse cultivars, having the species as the first search result shouldn't be intrusive?

My general search does sort by most popular (judged by how many different people have contributed content to that plant).

The functionality you're looking for does exist, though, I believe. If you search first for the genus (Sempervivum) and then at the top of the result click on "View all plants in the genus Sempervivum."

You will then get an alphabetically ordered list and your species arachnoides is right there near the top. Give that a try and let me know if this satisfies the need.

scvirginia said:Now I'm only getting one page of results with no indication of how to access the additional 'pages' of search results.

This is now fixed. It was only returning the first 20 results. It now allows searching for up to 500 entries. If that turns out also to not be enough, let me know and I can further increase the limit.

dave said: My general search does sort by most popular (judged by how many different people have contributed content to that plant).

The functionality you're looking for does exist, though, I believe. If you search first for the genus (Sempervivum) and then at the top of the result click on "View all plants in the genus Sempervivum."

You will then get an alphabetically ordered list and your species arachnoides is right there near the top. Give that a try and let me know if this satisfies the need.

Yes, I eventually gave up trying to find the plant record using the search box, and visited the plants database page. That did work, but I've been used to just using the top-of-the-page search box on whatever page I happen to be on. I guess I need to teach myself to go to the database page before searching. Popularity ranking doesn't help me much.

Thanks,
Virginia

@Dave
Not really a "problem" but you might want to fix this in the future?
I accidentally searched up "Trifolium repens)" and this popped up. Not that theres anything wrong with this, just that covering it with something might make it look better...

MySQL Error: 1064 (index plants_db: syntax error, unexpected ')' near ')')
Session halted.

Virginia, I've asked about the same thing before. If one searches, for example Dracaena fragrans, the species is not the first result.
https://garden.org/plants/sear...

I also spend a lot of time scrolling to find the species amid the cultivars when I search for a specific genus & species.