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Searching this (and any phpbb) forum really sucks!
http://forum.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=15710		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  RichardBronosky [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 1:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Searching this (and any phpbb) forum really sucks!
How on earth is a Firefox+Linux user supposed to search for "window manager" on the forum without getting every individual result for the 2 words?
Author:  slowtolearn [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Searching this (and any phpbb) forum really sucks!
RichardBronosky wrote:
How on earth is a Firefox+Linux user supposed to search for "window manager" on the forum without getting every individual result for the 2 words?
AFAIK you can't. And it's not a limitation of Firefox/Linux, it's an issue with the BB.
Author:  RichardBronosky [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:20 pm ]
Post subject: 
I really wish Google would index this forum.
Author:  grante [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 3:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Searching this (and any phpbb) forum really sucks!
>>How on earth is a Firefox+Linux user supposed to search for
>>"window manager" on the forum without getting every individual
>>result for the 2 words?
>
>AFAIK you can't. And it's not a limitation of Firefox/Linux,
>it's an issue with the BB.

I've never found searching PHPBB forums to be very productive.
The search features are just way too limited. There's no way
to search for phrases, no way to search subjects lines, etc.

One of the things that makes searching this forum particularly
futile is the people who put lists of hardware in their sigs.
That way when I'm searching for solutions for a problem with
ABC widget model XYZ, I get a hit on every flippin' post by
certain people even thought the post has absolutely zero
content related to the search terms.

You'd think they were getting paid for search hits... ;)
Author:  turpie [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 5:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Searching this (and any phpbb) forum really sucks!
grante wrote:
One of the things that makes searching this forum particularly
futile is the people who put lists of hardware in their sigs.

What's even worse is when they refer to the hardware list in their sig without considering that when they later change their setup they will be destroying any value their post may have had.
Author:  mihanson [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 5:24 pm ]
Post subject: 
KnoppMyth Google Search. I'm not sure how often google's bots index it though...
Author:  mihanson [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 5:27 pm ]
Post subject: 
mihanson wrote:
KnoppMyth Google Search. I'm not sure how often google's bots index it though...


Hmmm... I just tested it and it does not seem to work. :?
Author:  turpie [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 6:14 pm ]
Post subject: 
mihanson wrote:
mihanson wrote:
KnoppMyth Google Search. I'm not sure how often google's bots index it though...


Hmmm... I just tested it and it does not seem to work. :?

No it wont. Some time ago Cesman disabled non-logged in users from browsing the forums because the server was being overwhelmed with spiders and spambots crawling the site. Unfortunately as the Google webcrawler doesn't login it can't index the site.
Author:  mihanson [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 6:25 pm ]
Post subject: 
That's what I thought. Good to know. I'll delete that link from my bookmarks now...
Author:  tjc [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 7:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Searching this (and any phpbb) forum really sucks!
RichardBronosky wrote:
How on earth is a Firefox+Linux user supposed to search for "window manager" on the forum without getting every individual result for the 2 words?

Huhn? Click the radio button for "Search for all terms. It works under Galeon which uses the same page rendering engine (I just checked and it works with Firefox too). I get 75 postings which isn't too bad for such a common phrase. If a quick scan of the thread titles doesn't turn up anything promising try different terms. This is Web Searching 101 stuff...
Author:  mogator88 [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:03 pm ]
Post subject: 
I agree that a search on phrases would help immensely. I think that many of us have to do our tinkering in the wee hours, which makes even more difficult. That being said, we also have to remember we have a great product here that is FREE and yet has superior features and tech support. Since the heart of this KM setup is a DVR program at release 0.20 its even more amazing.

I have noticed that everything about KM has been logically thought out and that everything is done for a reason. I'm sure the same goes for this forum. We all, ALL know what a drag the search function is. Get over it, or buy a TIVO.
Author:  RichardBronosky [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Searching this (and any phpbb) forum really sucks!
tjc wrote:
This is Web Searching 101 stuff...


I know searching. :wink: I'm just saying that for quoted strings, a second pass, full text search is in order. The word-index is fine for the first pass, but come on!

As for the check the titles thing, unfortunately way too many people fail to follow proper netiquette. (titles like: "I was wondering", "newb question", "how do I do this")

Also, I'm surprised that signatures are searched. I guess they are embedded in the message, and not linked to the profile. I've never noticed.[/url]
Author:  turpie [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 11:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Searching this (and any phpbb) forum really sucks!
RichardBronosky wrote:
Also, I'm surprised that signatures are searched. I guess they are embedded in the message, and not linked to the profile. I've never noticed.

Actually they don't appear to be searched. I just tried searching for the text in my signature and didn't find any of my recent posts.
Author:  Xsecrets [ Tue Jun 26, 2007 11:43 pm ]
Post subject: 
yes the search in phpbb is rather pathetic. they have their reasons for not doing full text, but I would really love to know the boneheaded reason behind defaulting to any words instead of all words. I mean I seriously have to think pretty hard to figure out a situation where I would want any words instead of all words.
Author:  EvilTwin [ Wed Jun 27, 2007 5:15 pm ]
Post subject: 
Any word is actually the default in most search engines. The big difference is that they generally include a scoring mechanism ensuring that pages with all or most of the words end up near the front of the list, where phpBBS always seems to rank them by most recent first.

While phpBBS desn't have the worlds most sophisticated built in search, it's nowhere near as bad as many people make it out to be. It does take a bit of thought and practice to get the most out of it, but the same is true of Google, or Yahoo, or Ask, or whatever. You're just already used to the way those work.
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