search function for the boards?

[kriklaf]

Just wondering how difficult this would be to implement. Today I was looking for a couple of specific quotes from The Giant. I knew they were in threads having to do with the origin of Miko's name. I couldn't decide which would be faster--looking through all of Rich's replys or going back through the comic threads. However, if I could have done a search on topic headings containing Miko and Name, it would have made my search quicker. Likewise, if I remember the context of a quote, but not who said it, so that searching through all of someone's posts isn't possible, doing a search on thread titles could be helpful. Additionally, having a 'jump to page X' button might also be nice, since if you want to look at page 22 of a 51 page topic, you have to jump through two pages at a time.

Anyway, just suggestions.

[RawBearNYC]

Have you looked at the search link at the top of the page?

[wrath]

I second the request for a jump to page X button, good for wading through those 40+ page threads.

The search function on the site is about as good as any bulletin board system. Getting search results that are what you want right at the top is tricky, good reference librarians have an art for it, and google makes big bucks with clever algorithms that they guard as trade secrets.

Some tips that help in searching, narrow your search to just the board you think the post is in, like comics or d20 gaming or whatever. Second, when you bring up someone's profile, it list's their username, note that it may be different than the name that appears with their posts. You can use a combination of that username, a good set of keywords, and board/time restrictions to trim the fat from your searches pretty well. Also if your siifting deep and far, turn up the number of results the search will return, it will get you more info though it will make the search take longer.

Hope that helps some and happy searching!

[kriklaf]

Have you looked at the search link at the top of the page?

...no. D'OH! I'm an idiot. Thanks, Rawbear. The real killer is that I even looked around before posting, checking near the list of page numbers and so forth, and just never saw the search link. Again, I'm a dummy...

And now having looked at it--it's great. Very user-friendly. Thanks!

[wrath]

In the if it was a snake it would have bit me sense of this thread, I just rethought the jump to page X thing, you CAN do that now, just not from within the thread, you need to be at the board level (i.e. in comics, d20 gaming, etc) and then it lists all the pages, you can click on any of them from there. So while I still think a thread level button would be handy, I can work-around it from the board level.

[Adghar]

Also - this has tripped people up before - when searching for posts by a person, be sure to change the option that is shown on the dropper menu to the right of the username input. By default, it will ignore whatever's in the username input - if you want to search for posts by a particular person, yo uneed to change the option.

[iamkoolerthanu]

With the search button, even if I am only looking for one word from a specific poster with only one result with one topic and everything, it takes like 10 min. for it to load. Is itmy computer, or is it the site?

[RawBearNYC]

With the search button, even if I am only looking for one word from a specific poster with only one result with one topic and everything, it takes like 10 min. for it to load. Is itmy computer, or is it the site?
it's probably the site, the data store isn't efficient for text based searching.

[iamkoolerthanu]

Ok, thanks! :)