Question

I would like to add a search/browse feature to my website.

Users will be able to search for people by email address or first and last name. They’ll also be able to browse through the site’s users with the option of using the following search filters:

age range
country 
location (city)
gender

Should this be done without the use of something like Thinking Sphinx?

Answer 1

I used sphinx in my real projects.
I would recommend you to use thinking sphinx gem with Sphinx Search for following reasons:

1: Performence
All your searchable data will become search index file. Therefore while user
perform their search, there is no SQL query to the database.

2: It is easier to do complex search. If you have a look thinking sphinx wiki
you will see how many different kind of search you can do with it. Plus the
Geo-location Search. It is very hard or a lot more work needed if you do it by
using Rails where methods or SQL query.

By the way, use delta index and scheduled rake tasks to keep your search index up to date.

I normally rebuild my search index every early morning.