Improve the Search feature in the forums

by **nietzsche** on Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:31 pm

Seriously, it just plain sucks. Works sometimes, others clearly misses obvious targets. There must be a pattern which I don't care since I want to be able to find something I sort of remember being posted, don't have perfect memory to remember everything and then search for it.

Specifics/Details:

Misses many, many targets
Misses targets that you can still see in front of you
One should be able to find any matchs

How this will benefit the site and/or other comments:

Avoid duplicated posts
See what others have said about some topic
Saves a lot of time
In this day and age, websites are divided en those well organized, searchable, and those who are jut a bunch of pages

by **AndyDufresne** on Fri Apr 27, 2012 3:07 pm

Since we use phpBB, this is a sort of suggestion for them at their forum!

Have you tried using * as a wildcard for partial matches (of either posters or specific words for which you are seeking)? Or using the + and - to further define your searches?

For instance, this search brings up 930 results...essentially posts where I have mentioned "banana" without any mention of "munching" or "munches" within the post:
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While without the -munch (and thus searching just banana) I get 1437 results.

Remember, you can also limit your results to a specific time frame if you when you want to look for results. Here is might first search again (-munch* banana), limited to the last 2 weeks. 8 results are brought up:
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--Andy

by **nietzsche** on Fri Apr 27, 2012 5:01 pm

tl dr

by **Army of GOD** on Sat Apr 28, 2012 12:19 am

I agree. It's absolutely terrible. I'll spell a word incorrectly and get 0 results, then correct it and get 7 billion results.

by **nietzsche** on Sat Apr 28, 2012 2:02 am

To be honest, I hadn't tried the operators here. They don't work in most unsophisticated sites and sometime ago I set up in my mind that they didn't work here. My iq is below 100 i tend to make these mistakes.

I just tried them and they do work. And to think that a lot of times got angry because I was trying to find something and thought to my self ''of course this shit don't work''.

Go ahead and close this thread.

I just don't like Andy, so it took AoG's post to realize the Search do work.