Tech Behind Search Improvements

Over the summer, we have made several improvements to the new version of the site (Rewrite),. One of the biggest improvements was with search. Since we released Rewrite, the performance of search has been a concern.  We did little to improve the speed before the release because of time constraints. It was decided that we needed to revisit it this summer to get things in great shape for the Fall semester.

We implemented the following changes:

• Cache single word and subject searches - we added Memcached to store some searches.  A cron job is reloading the subject searches into the cache on a regular basis.
• Pagination on Search Result page - previously we were displaying all of the search results on the same page. This caused a long page render time which made the slow search even slower. We are now displaying 10 items on each page. Books are displayed first since most users are looking for books. When possible, we use the cached search results to return the next page.
• Improved SQL performance - we tweaked the SQL used for the queries to optimize them.

All of these changes are no-brainers, but have vastly improved search.

Publishing Added to OpenStax CNX Demo Site

We have recently added publishing to our Demo site.  If you are not aware, Demo is our alpha testing ground for the new version of our site,  Not everything is working yet and there are bugs remaining, but users can get a feel for what is coming soon to OpenStax CNX.

Users can

• Create, edit and publish a new Page
• Create, edit and publish a new Book 
• Derive a Page or Book when viewing content
• Derive a Page when editing a Book 
• Publish a Book with published and unpublished Pages (the unpublished Pages get published with the Book). 

Please take a look and give us some feedback at techsupport at cnx dot org.  We would love to have you help us improve editing and publishing. The site will be updated regularly so check back often to see our progress. 

OpenStax College Android App Released

A new Android app that features the OpenStax College books was released on May 2nd.  The features include

• Viewing released books
• Saving Books or Pages to your Bookmarks
• Take notes while reading
• Export your notes to a text file or share them.
• Share a Book or Page

The app is open source and the code is in Github. You can install the app from the Google Play store.

The app can be used to access these books

• College Physics
• Introduction to Sociology
• Biology
• Concepts of Biology
• Anatomy and Physiology
• Introductory Statistics
• Principles of Economics
• Principles of Microeconomics
• Principles of Macroeconomics

From a technical point of view, the app is based off of the existing OpenStax CNX Android app.  As part of our name change, the mobile version of our site was modified to work better with the Android app.  The result is a simplified look of the content (see screenshot).

If you use the app, we would love to hear feedback either as a rating of the app or by contacting us at android at cnx.org.