Search Fields

http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums

And then enter the word you are looking for.

I entered Rust, and as David says, the list can be long, in this case at least 100 forum entries

I then tried EW Lathe and was given 10.

So if you are looking for something not that common you may find this useful.

If you look at Google's Cached pages, rather that the forum page direct, the word will even be highlighted.

Of course, if the item being searched is very recent Google may not yet have found it.

On my PC the Advanced search facility only becomes available after first doing a web wide search, but that can be ignored.

I use this method to search my MEW index on the web that runs to about 100 pages. I again searched for EW lathe and it came up once in the lathe reviews pages.

The index is at www.homews-mew-index.co.uk

Harold

Come on David

The forum is impossible to search, which puts it in a league of its own. I know there are postings in there I want to find but short of spending hours randomly and fruitlessly diving in and out of likely-looking threads, there's no way of finding them. I can't even search by author. I challenge you to find a posting unless you already know exactly where to look for it.

If the search returns too many results, then the normal reaction is to make the search more specific. That's how they work and therein lies the power of the search tool.

Would there be any harm in having the search facility available? If it's really that useless we could always not use it. It would be nice to have the choice.

Please enable the search function and let us decide whether to use it or not. It could only improve our experience of the forums.

Pretty please?

Murray

You can use googlie to search a site

site:http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums

just put your search terms on the end

Your 2 posts before tonite

You can indeed use Google. But try searching for say "johnston", as if you were hoping to see what posts our good friend Andy has perpetrated recently. Sure enough, you'll get plenty of hits back but if you try to follow any of them, you won't have any luck unless said gent is responsible for the very last post on that page (try it) - not much use as a search tool really.

To search the web page quickly for a key word (in this case "johnston", you can hit control+F and enter the key word in the box. Usually this comes up blank.

Perhaps I'm missing something?

Pehaps it would help if people would use sensible titles for their topics that describe the content. On lots of forums it bugs me no end that people use topics like "Help", "Urgent. Noobie needs help" etc. On moderated forums and groups the admin will sit on one of these for a couple of days and still let it through. Daft. At least on here David will help by improving a title when asked so the search engine will find it one day.

Even the more experienced will still ask for information having not bothered to use google at all or expect people to use telepathy to identify their lathe and what the problem really is from their garbled description.

I imagine that depends a lot on what was being searched for and how the query was worded.

Whatever, if this is the only reason for not implementing a full message body search could you not do what many other forums do - have a drop-down that lets a user select whether the search will be "Full" or "Subject Only"?. That way if he/she wants to take the trouble with many hits it's up to him/her.

At least then they couldn't complain at you

Edited By Sid Herbage on 29/02/2012 18:22:43

I made a posting about a Hudswell Clark Diesel Shunter D604 - googled for more info on this engine the next day and got my posting!

Neil

I wanted to find somethng on MEW today and in short order came to the realization there is scant native Search capability available within the forum itself.

This astounds someone such as myself, a longtime proficient user of tools like vBulletin's Advanced Search for scalpel-like precision knowledge retrieval from BBS database archives.

I was going to start a thread to ask for direction, thinking it was just a matter of infamiliarity with the site tool location. But first decided to see what results the rudimentary capability might deliver.

"Search Forum" ... nothing

"Forum search" ... nothing

"Search" ... 35 results

35? Really ?

** ==================== **

I post these observations to the tail of a ten-year-old thread to emphasize that nothing regarding forum search deficiencies appears to have changed in a decade.

Yes, I've seen the advice directing people to utilize Google. Thanks, but no thanks.

I do not know who David Clark is, but suppose him to be a stakeholder of some sort in MEW and I find his contribution(s) to this thread to be illuminating.

Bewildering state of affairs here.

Unfortunately things won't change anytime soon. If you are not willing to use Google then maybe think again as entering "search" brings up 10,600 results on the forum rather than your rather low 35.

David Clark is ex Editor of ME and MEW mags

Eddy,

Give us a clue ... What is it that you want to find ?

MichaelG.