Forming a search query

[Clive Long]

I'm trying to find threads on videoing dance lessons.

So I typed in advanced search the following

video camera
"Video" "camera"
"Video" and "camera"
video and lesson
"video" and "lesson"

... you get the idea

All these multiple search arguments turned up zero matches. Now I'm sure this subject was tackled a year ago - probably several times. It's possible there are zero matches on these particular keywaords - but I doubt it.

So my question is a bit wider.

What is the syntaxt to search for multiple words in the header or body of a post on the Forum?

Wedgie

[David Franklin]

Originally Posted by Clive Long

So my question is a bit wider.

What is the syntaxt to search for multiple words in the header or body of a post on the Forum?

Sadly, the most appropriate syntax seems to be:

google: video camera lesson site:www.cerocscotland.com

Which finds, for example, this thread, which a forum search on "video camera lessons" doesn't seem to find, despite all 3 words being in the second post. Indeed, "videoing practice sessions" doesn't find the thread either, although that is actually the thread title!

I may be missing somethng, but the search function on the forum seems completely and utterly broken.

[Lory]

Originally Posted by David Franklin

I may be missing somethng, but the search function on the forum seems completely and utterly broken.

I think you could be right, as I did some searches earlier on and had 0 results

[Gadget]

Not broken, just crap.

Perhaps a permi-link to use google rather than the built-in searh would be a good idea?

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Gadget

Not broken, just crap.

Perhaps a permi-link to use google rather than the built-in searh would be a good idea?

Sounds like a good plan - but aren't some areas un-googled? I thought the members-only stuff wasn't recorded?

Getting a search engine to work well is a major pain, I know from experience. There's a good reason why Google is worth two hundred gazillion dollars or whatever - it's so damned difficult to get right.

Of course, the trouble is, people generally don't appreciate how much effort goes into this innoccuous and invisible piece of software - they expect ever search to be the standard of Google.

Having said that, the more cerocscotland content we create, the more vital a decent search facility becomes...

[ducasi]

Tips to get the search engine to work...

• Always use "Advanced search"
• Don't try to search for words of 3 letters or less – just don't.
• Try to limit your searches to only one word.

Then give up and use Google.

[Gadget]

I also normally put in "posted by user" as me (or someone I remember saying something) - it limits the search quite a bit.

And I swap between "List posts" and "List threads" for the results depending if I'm looking for a particular post or just a thread.

[Graham]

I was hoping that Franck would have commented, as he hopefully knows the facts, but from observation I believe that searching topic titles is working correctly. Searching the entire post looks to me as if it has a time-out specified, so it returns after a specific amount of time rather than when it has actually finished the search. This will of course result in a random number of hits. It is certainly limited in some non-obvious way.

I expect that this has been done to alleviate the pressure on the server. Also from observation, it looks to me as if the server is fairly heavily loaded at the moment - response times seem slower than they used to be, so it's not surprising this feature has been implemented, if indeed it has. Like I said, I would be interested in Franck's comments.