Search function?

Not sure if it's just me, or maybe temporary, but I can't search topics. Even common terms such as "pic" don't return any hits.

Anybody else seeing the same?

Use Google set to only search this site.

- Google Search

Click on Search > enter "pic" > click "tag search" > click on "PIC" in the listed tags.

forumlicker007 said:

Click on Search > enter "pic" > click "tag search" > click on "PIC" in the listed tags.

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Thanks to both of you. PIC was only one example, but I could of course use Google.

The search feature on this forum is pretty crappy, I prefer Google.

Hero999 said:

The search feature on this forum is pretty crappy, I prefer Google.

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Search features on forums are VERY heavy on resources, so they are usually set pretty poorly to minimise the resources they use.

Nigel Goodwin said:

Search features on forums are VERY heavy on resources, so they are usually set pretty poorly to minimise the resources they use.

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It's true. vBulletin's search function is not one I've ever really liked, and it's based upon a backend db search system which really requires quite a bit of tweaking to get just right, and even so it usually forces the site admin into making some unfortunate tradeoffs to keep it working acceptably well on high-traffic sites. This isn't helped by the MySQL documentation much either. It's not bad documentation but it's not great.


Torben

Why not just use a Google frontend?

Electro-Master might want to take note of that, there has to be some way to link the search function to google directly in the up and up?

Just wanted to clarify, the site search requires 4 letter words at least..

ElectroMaster said:

Just wanted to clarify, the site search requires 4 letter words at least..

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Y'know, that could be read the wrong way. . .

Just kidding. In seriousness though it is unfortunate that such a great site is let down (if only a bit, really) by vBulletin's search. At least this is fairly easily sidestepped by the aforementioned workaround of using Google instead.

It's a pity that vBulletin doesn't see fit to offer an evaluation or personal version for free download. Addressing problems such as the search setup is something I'm quite good at but I'm not able to spend $100 USD just to run a test server which no-one else will ever see.

If you ever want a hand at optimizing the MySQL backend and search settings just drop me a line. Normally I write these sorts of systems, so I may be able to help. It would be nice to at least get the system to a point where the 4-character minimum can be reduced to a 3-character minimum.


Regards (and again, thanks for one of the best forums on the net),

Torben

ElectroMaster, you already do ads through Goggle, they have to have some web front end that you can use to link the boards search function directly through Google, would definitely be worth looking into, people are finicky, a better search ability on the website would likley cut down on the number of posts from people requesting the same information repeatedly. Sure you could go to Google yourself and type in the host, but most people don't know that, and the ones that do (like me) just find it annoying.

Google must have some public notice about fair use of linking directly to their search engine, after all they WANT people to use their search engine.

Good points. I will look into things and see what google can offer or see if there are any mods out for the search to improve it.

Thank you for your offer Torben, will definitely keep you in mind

coincidentally I was searching for topics with the words capacitor AND rectifier in the title, but I got a lot of results of themes with capacitor OR/AND rectifier in the title.