[community] search function for support.tpo

[Alison Macrina]

Linus Nordberg:
> emma peel <emma.peel at riseup.net> wrote
> Fri, 16 Nov 2018 07:41:00 +0000:
> 
>> silvia [hiro]:
>>>
>>> On 11/15/18 10:06 AM, emma peel wrote:
>>
>>>> What I like about the 'central search' idea is that you can get a
>>>> User Manual result when searching Tor Support... because we have so
>>>> many different pieces of content that I liked the idea of moving
>>>> the user from one site to the other through the searches.
>>>>
>>>> Is this still going to happen with your proposal?
>>>
>>> I like that too, but I think UX wanted search results per portal?
>>
>> I don't know about doing it project-wide, but I feel that for example
>> support.torproject.org and tb-manual.torproject.org could share search
>> results.
> 
> I think this is a good time for figuring out what Tor Project wants from
> a search function. I've put down a couple of statements sprinkled with
> questions below. Please jump in and argue against false statements and
> answer questions where possible. And please add more questions.


Thanks Linus! Thoughts below:


> 
> 
> - The web site support.tpo needs a search field and a button next to it
>   resulting in the user seeing a list of matching url's (and their
>   titles) in their browser.

Agree.

> 
> - What corpus would such a search look at? support.tpo only? support.tpo
>   and tb-manual.tpo? More than that?
>   
> - Are there other tpo sites that need/want a search function? Should
>   search results include matches from other tpo sites as well, or only
>   the one the user is currently visiting?


I think search should have the capacity to look across the website, with
buttons allowing the user to limit results to just the portal they're
currently looking at should they choose.


> 
> - Sending the user to a separate site, say search.tpo, is considered not
>   UX friendly enough.
> 
> - Is search.<site>.tpo good enough?

I don't have an opinion on this, will defer to UX people.

> 
> - Are we limited to using solr, as mentioned in #25322, or can we
>   explore other options?
> 
> - User fronting tpo web sites are "on the static rotation" because
>   that's how we can keep them up and running given the resources at
>   hand. Adding dynamic content, i.e. anything that is not "oh, that url
>   corresponds to this file, let's send it to the user", would not be
>   possible on our current set of VM's given the load we see on user
>   facing tpo websites. This means that one of the proposed solutions
>   with web servers proxying requests to a separate service, search.tpo,
>   is not an option. Another argument against proxying is that it breaks
>   the expectation of end-to-end security given by HTTPS.

I don't have an opinion on these last two either. :)

Alison