The Forum Search

MSE_Martin

Hi folks,

I know many of you find problems with the site search, and it not returning results when you know they're there. I find this confusing as that's something that's never happened to me.

The two problems we know of are 1. You can't search three letter words 2. The site returns nothing on some very common words - e.g. Tesco, Boots as they simply appear too many times for the site to cope with.

Yet apart from that it works well. It occured to me some people may not know the following

1. Use advanced search if its a specific term
2. Ensure you're searching "in posts" rather than "in titles" or you will get as it says, only words that appear in titles
3. Make sure you're selected the 'how long to search box' correctly
4. Ensure you've selected all boards (or just the specific board you want)

Now if you've done this and still can't find the post you know is there (excluding the super-common words as above), please report the word and the post here so we can take a look.

Martin

peter999

Martin, you're always on the money.

1) 'how long to search box' always default back to 7 days:
I was thinking of querying that 'how long to search box' always defaults back to 7 days.
It gets annoying that it keeps returning to 7 days for SUBSEQUENT searches.

Yes, when you first go to Search page it should be 7 days.
But if you change to another period, it should STAY until you leave Search page.

2) Three letter word searches:
It would be great to find a workaround on this as I have had problem finding something, then remembered issue with 3 letter word searches.

peter999

MSE_Martin

Hi Peter

As for the default, thats deliberate - the search uses ENORMOUS resources and slows the site down each time. So not going back so far helps. Many people are looking for recent posts - so rather than wasting resources by always searching for a longer period, it makes people actively choose to go for longer

Three letter word search; I agree (I can't even search MSG ) but Vbulletin doesn't allow it and again because three letter words are so common, it would push resources.

The real answer is use a different search software, like Googles, it's on the list but the site redesign is ahead of it. That's why I wanted to ensure people are doing the search correctly, as I think that may be part of the problem

Martin

sra

I'll just throw out an idea -

Ubuntu forums have a tag system. (eg. look at the top of this thread). When you submit a thread you have to give it a tag telling people what it is about, then people can search tags easily. Moderators can edit/add tags to help.

I assume it's this.

Might be an interesting addition to the search (or if our current search is really failing so badly be a replacement till you create your better search). Must be less stress on the system to have a system that uses a relatively small database of tags?

But I've only just seen this so I've not had time to really test out the pros and cons. From a user point of view on Ubuntu forums I've found it great, but it is a bit of a change to have to think of keywords to describe your thread.