SOLR Search Improves Elgg Search Accuracy by 90%

It’s not a secret that search is a major performance hit to Elgg when you reach a certain size of database and user activity.  Some time ago we made the temporary decision to disable native elgg search on the community and rely on google.  This didn’t feel right and we really wanted to get back to having our own internal search.

It just so happened that around this time one of my clients at Arck Interactive had commissioned a custom SOLR integration for search.  The original plugin was developed by Billy Gunn, refined by me, then completely rewritten for general use and released to the community.

With testing help from a number of community members (Gerard, Ura Soul) the plugin has matured to a very stable and production-ready state.  I rolled it out on the community here a few weeks ago and have been testing/watching it and the performance has been stellar.

For global site searches we’re seeing a wait reduction in the 90-95% range, usually having results in a fraction of a second.  Additionally the relevance of the results is significantly better than the bundled Elgg search plugin.

So check it out, enjoy the responsiveness and the ability to stay on the site when searching.

Thanks again to Arck Interactive for the initial development work and allowing me to build off it for the community version.

The solr plugin is available for download at the elgg community site: http://community.elgg.org/plugins/1635100/1.5.1/solr-search