Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : WHT Announcements, Feedback and Questions : I'm afraid to use SEARCH here!

[ttk_2k]

Hi, sorry for the topic but please forgive me, I'm an honest WHT fan, however has been afraid to use Search in here..

I can't remember since when, but the search here has been TOO difficult and VERY inefficient. I'm sorry about it, when you want to search for multiple words, for example to search for best free forum, the more words you input, the more inefficient it would be, you can't search like on other VB based forums to use a word "AND" or an addition mark "+" to include all the keywords you want to search, neither to match the exact phrase, but just no matter how/what you input, every time it will ONLY work as "OR", including to search with quotation marked, like "best free forum software", it will return the same result even you search with following ways:

• best AND free AND forum AND software
• best OR free OR forum OR software
• best, free, forum, software
• etc...

Is there anywhere I've made mistake or that the administrator decides to use a such search solution? I found this difficult since about 1 month ago, and now I'm afraid to search the forum, when I want to search for how people were discussing about free forum softwares, when I input "free" and "forum" into the search box, I just found all threads which have the word "free", including most of them are are about "free hostings", but mostly none about "free forum". Sounds like to find a needle from the sea...

Sorry for my english, and sorry for this topic.

I wish WHT would be better and easier for us to use, and be happy to stay.

Thanks for your time.

TT

[hurleyvapor999]

I agree. You guys should add an option next to the search menu which allows for a user to search for any word or match all words that they type in.

[CD Burnt]

the advanced search (search type: boolean) isn't suitable?

[Alex]

Originally Posted by CD Burnt

the advanced search (search type: boolean) isn't suitable?

That's what I use, and it works fine.


Alex

[ttk_2k]

Originally Posted by CD Burnt

the advanced search (search type: boolean) isn't suitable?

Hi, seems it is what I am talking about... >.<

They really need to put some words beside it, I know it's my own problem though, that my limited knowledge... 'boolean' was just 'yes' or 'no', '1' or '0' in my brain.. lol

I assume there might be more people having the same concept (probably no concept) regard this 'boolean' search.

Anyway, thanks for your info! cheers!

TT

[avythe]

I've also noticed that the search is fairly inefficient a good amount of the time - the advanced search feature usually works fine for me, but the basic search usually ends up with 50 pages related to something extremely specific.

[SoftWareRevue]

Originally Posted by ttk_2k

... 'boolean' was just 'yes' or 'no'...

If you use the 'Save Search Preferences' button near the bottom of the page, you won't have to remember to tick boolean.

Maybe we can get it ticked as default for members.

[Artashes]

Maybe an idea for iNet (or whoever their owner is) could be:
http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/

[ttk_2k]

Originally Posted by SoftWareRevue

...Maybe we can get it ticked as default for members.

That'll be great! Do it my friend, people will love you!

[SoftWareRevue]

Originally Posted by Artashes

Maybe an idea for iNet (or whoever their owner is) could be:
http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/

That is something that iNET's looked into.

[HHIC]

Originally Posted by ttk_2k

That'll be great! Do it my friend, people will love you!

I'm also here with you, I've experienced a lot of problems with search in WHT, and the Advanced search page just frightens me

[shockuk]

Instead of iNET forking out loads of money on a Google Mini, you could simply use the following link:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=sit...ostingtalk.com

Then add your search terms to the end - easy I quite often use this method for searching forums, as most search features in forum software really are inadequate (including vB), although in turn that's a reflection on the speed of searching a MySQL database.

[Artashes]

shockuk, often not all pages are crawled and indexed by Google, so relying on that remote search option represents potential gaps in the quality of search.

Best,

[twhiting9275]

the advanced search (search type: boolean) isn't suitable?

Search on WHT has been off for quite some time, at LEAST since the 2.x to 3.5 upgrade. Not sure why, but it is.

Proof:
Go to search (natural or boolean, doesn't matter)
Search for my domain for example (in my profile, don't really want to spamvertise it here)
In natural, you get 101 pages of stuff, same with boolean, over 1/2 of which my domain is not mentioned. The other half it is.

Before the v3 upgrade, this wasn't a problem, but now it is a huge one. Customers wanting to do a "search" on a domain get mixed results at best.

[YUPAPA]

Originally Posted by ttk_2k

• best AND free AND forum AND software
• best OR free OR forum OR software
• best, free, forum, software
• etc...

I don't really get how this work. Do you just combine the words AND / OR with the keywords I want to search?

Like if I want to search for a thread containing the words - "Converse" and also "Vans", do I just type "Converse AND Vans" as the keywords?