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Finding things in the forum

PostPosted: Sun Sep 05, 2010 8:05 pm
by GreenLake
Many questions can be answered by reading older discussions. The trick is finding them.

The search function that comes with the forum software is a bit tricky. If you are looking for a single word that is very distinctive, it might get you where you want to go. It's main advantage should be the ability to show a list of threads (as opposed to each and every post) that mention the subject, as well as limit which poster wrote an entry.

I've never gotten good results out of it, so I now use my regular search engine and type something like this into the search box:

site:forum.daysailer.org "finding things in the forum"

The first thing is to use "site:" without a space followed by "forum.daysailer.org". That limits searches to this subsite (and 99% of this site is the forum).

The second is to use the rules for creating searches.

If often enclose the search terms in quotes if they go go together like "jib sheet" so I don't get all mentions of jibs and all mentions of sheet.

Occasionally, I use a "-" in front of a term to avoid some topics I'm not interested in. The search

site:forum.daysailer.org coamings -varnish

should bring all posts that discuss coamings, but don't mention varnish. However, the search engines don't necessarily understand about posts, so the search expression always applies to a whole page or 10 or 20 adjacent posts.

EDIT: I've updated the URLs based on the new forum location. If you want to search the main website, use site:daysailer.org

Re: Finding things in the forum

PostPosted: Wed Feb 25, 2015 5:25 pm
by powpowhunter
With the new changes to the DSA site and resulting change to the forum URL, the search must be modified slightly to produce working links, at least in my experience/testing. Use "site:forum.daysailer.org" instead if you find problems with results not linking properly.

Re: Finding things in the forum

PostPosted: Wed Feb 25, 2015 6:13 pm
by GreenLake
Appreciate you pointing this out. I have edited it in the first post

Re: Finding things in the forum

PostPosted: Wed Feb 25, 2015 8:32 pm
by K.C. Walker
This is great! I very much appreciate the work that you have done getting the forum transferred over! And, these search methods are really helpful! Thank you! Thank you!

This seems like something that should be a sticky, at the top, somewhere where it's easily found.

Re: Finding things in the forum

PostPosted: Wed Feb 25, 2015 11:31 pm
by GreenLake
It's already sticky, but not an "announcement" so it will be near the top of the main topic list. However, I may cull the announcements a bit, there are just too many. As always, you can wait for me to have the right brain wave, otherwise I'm happy to take suggestions on how to make the forum work better for everyone.

Re: Finding things in the forum

PostPosted: Thu Jun 29, 2017 8:18 pm
by GreenLake
Searching for images is possible, the access is a bit hidden (and the forum internal search works best with single words).

To search images: go to the gallery. Near the top of the page, on the right hand side, part way down is the word "Search" (next to "Mark albums read").

If you click on the word "Search", you get a search dialog, and you can enter words like "spinnaker".
(Do NOT use the "Search...." box in the blue banner; that one is for forum posts only.)

From what I can tell, the search looks for both words in the "image name" and the "description" for the given image.

Here's a direct link to the search page for the gallery: http://forum.daysailer.org/forum/gallery/search.php. As you can see, it allows you to limit the search to a particular user's images.

Here's the search results that are pulled up when you search for "spinnaker": http://forum.daysailer.org/forum/gallery/search.php?keywords=spinnaker&terms=all&username=&sk=t&sd=d&e=0&submit=Search

If people leave the image name the same as their local file name (for example "DSC 0138 640x480") and do not enter a description, then the search has nothing to go by; however, I easily found about 20 images related to spinnakers. If you have anything in your galleries that you think is useful for others, make sure to use a keyword as part of the image name and add a short description in the comment. (Looks like you can edit name and description for existing images as well - haven't actually tested whether it saves them to the same index number, but would expect so).

Note, it's not possible to search for "DSII rigging" and expect to get reasonable results. However, "Rigging" by itself gets about 2 dozen hits, some more useful than others.

Re: Finding things in the forum

PostPosted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 6:21 pm
by baggywrinkle
Thanks all for helpful info in this thread !!