# New search test feedback thread



## WebmasterAlex

Please remember that the new search is still in Beta testing, we expect some glitches and some up and down time. 
All of the posts are not indexed yet


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## Aisling

I just clicked on a Disers name to find all posts by that person, and it worked.  This option has been out of order for a long while, so I'm glad to see it back and running!


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## Aisling

Ok, the Search won't go father back than March 3, 2007.  My Search listed 234 pages, but I'm stuck on page 40, and it won't budge.  I keep clicking "Next" , and clicking in the next page number, and it looks like it's searching, but it keeps going bak to page 40.


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## WebmasterAlex

Correct, as I said in the original post the boards are still being indexed. As time goes by you will be able to search back farther and farther.


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## LadyBears

Much better than what we have been dealing with!!

When the improved search is fully functional, will we also have more options such as: (I copied from one of the other boards I frequent, but several different sites use the same format)



Recent Posts Search 
Show New Posts from the last:  days,  hours,  minutes. 



Search by Key WordKey Word(s):

 Search Entire Posts Search Titles Only    


Search by User NameUser Name:


														 Find Posts by User Find Threads Started by User Exact name 
or find threads started by user

Find Threads with At Least At Most  Replies 


Find Posts from Any Date Your Last Visit Yesterday A Week Ago 2 Weeks Ago A Month Ago 3 Months Ago 6 Months Ago A Year Ago  and Newer and Older 

Sort Results by Relevancy Title Number of Replies Number of Views Thread Start Date Last Posting Date User Name Forum  in Descending Order in Ascending Order 
 or accending order


Show Results asShow Results as Threads Posts 

Search by Key WordKey Word(s):

 Search Entire Posts Search Titles Only


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## Alex2kMommy

Is there some documentation on how the search feature is supposed to work?

For instance, if you just enter a word/phrase, should it search through all forums and go back as far as you have data stored?  Or is there some standard criteria it will use unless you specify otherwise, such as "posts within the past week"?

I searched on the phrase "chandelier swinger" (a DIS nickname for my DS3) and expected to see posts on the DL Chat thread within the CB.  There were no results returned.

So I did an advanced search, leaving the word/phrase text the same but entering a username in that field, which I assumed would narrow the search phrase to posts by that person.  I still got no results.  

When I used the drop-down list for selecting a date range, I was not sure what to select.  Does "Yesterday" refer really to only yesterday, or yesterday through today?  Does "Last month" search only in the prior calendar month (May 1 - 31), or 30 days ago, or 30 days through today, or May 1 through today?

I'm guessing the lack of results has to do with the incomplete indexing, but I'm still not sure if my expectations of how the advanced search works is accurate.

Thanks.

ETA:  Oops!  I totally missed the part of the instructions where it said to change the view to 'California Gold'.  Once I did that I did get one thread (result), and when I clicked on it, it brought me to the page containing the most frequent reference of my search criteria.  

But I still am unclear on how the search should work for specific criteria.  Thanks!


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## WebmasterAlex

LadyBears said:


> Much better than what we have been dealing with!!
> 
> When the improved search is fully functional, will we also have more options such as: (I copied from one of the other boards I frequent, but several different sites use the same format)
> 
> 
> 
> Recent Posts Search
> Show New Posts from the last:  days,  hours,  minutes.
> 
> 
> 
> Search by Key WordKey Word(s):
> 
> Search Entire Posts Search Titles Only
> 
> 
> Search by User NameUser Name:
> 
> 
> Find Posts by User Find Threads Started by User Exact name
> or find threads started by user
> 
> Find Threads with At Least At Most  Replies
> 
> 
> Find Posts from Any Date Your Last Visit Yesterday A Week Ago 2 Weeks Ago A Month Ago 3 Months Ago 6 Months Ago A Year Ago  and Newer and Older
> 
> Sort Results by Relevancy Title Number of Replies Number of Views Thread Start Date Last Posting Date User Name Forum  in Descending Order in Ascending Order
> or accending order
> 
> 
> Show Results asShow Results as Threads Posts
> 
> Search by Key WordKey Word(s):
> 
> Search Entire Posts Search Titles Only



We may have some of that functionality but not all. The people that are developing search will be reading this tomorrow morning so it's good to make suggestions


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## WebmasterAlex

Alex2kMommy said:


> Is there some documentation on how the search feature is supposed to work?
> 
> For instance, if you just enter a word/phrase, should it search through all forums and go back as far as you have data stored?  Or is there some standard criteria it will use unless you specify otherwise, such as "posts within the past week"?
> 
> I searched on the phrase "chandelier swinger" (a DIS nickname for my DS3) and expected to see posts on the DL Chat thread within the CB.  There were no results returned.
> 
> So I did an advanced search, leaving the word/phrase text the same but entering a username in that field, which I assumed would narrow the search phrase to posts by that person.  I still got no results.
> 
> When I used the drop-down list for selecting a date range, I was not sure what to select.  Does "Yesterday" refer really to only yesterday, or yesterday through today?  Does "Last month" search only in the prior calendar month (May 1 - 31), or 30 days ago, or 30 days through today, or May 1 through today?
> 
> I'm guessing the lack of results has to do with the incomplete indexing, but I'm still not sure if my expectations of how the advanced search works is accurate.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> ETA:  Oops!  I totally missed the part of the instructions where it said to change the view to 'California Gold'.  Once I did that I did get one thread (result), and when I clicked on it, it brought me to the page containing the most frequent reference of my search criteria.
> 
> But I still am unclear on how the search should work for specific criteria.  Thanks!



There is no documentation as it is a work in progress
Yesterday means since yesterday and yes once it's fully indexed it will work for as long as there is data stored


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## BoardTracker

LadyBears said:


> Much better than what we have been dealing with!!
> 
> When the improved search is fully functional, will we also have more options such as: .....





> Recent Posts Search: Show New Posts from the last:  days,  hours,  minutes


Basically "latest posts".. the search in general can be ordered by "latest posts first" (one of two options). So this is basically part of the search. To show ALL posts or threads in such an order is very easy. If Disboards wants to, it can be easily achieved.



> Search Entire Posts


Already so.



> Search Titles Only


The relevancy of BoardTracker (the new version just as well) is effective enough to negate the need for such seperate feature.
If what you are searching for is in the title, and you order by relevancy, you will see this post/thread first, or certainly among the first. If you can do the same with less features/options/checkboxes/... its a good thing. no?
Try it and see. Let us know what you found.



> Search by User User Name:


Already so.
We will soon add partial username match as well.




> Find Posts by User/  Find Threads Started by User Exact name/ find threads started by user


See above



> Find Threads with At Least/At Most Replies


Do you think its something that makes sense to add as a feature? Note that replies (and views) are presented in the search results so that searchers can easily identify threads with a lot of replies. Your opinion?




> Find Posts from Any Date Your Last Visit Yesterday A Week Ago 2 Weeks Ago A Month Ago 3 Months Ago 6 Months Ago A Year Ago  and Newer and Older


Already supported: Day, Week, Month, Year, All-time. 



> Sort Results by: Relevancy/ Title/ Number of Replies/ Number of Views/ Thread Start Date/ Last Posting Date/ User Name/ Forum (in Descending Order in Ascending Order or accending order)


The supported features are Sort by date (newer first) and by relevancy. 
Last posting date, is basically the post's date, so that covered when searching all posts by date. Thread start date, is covered if you restrict search for "Original posts only". 
As for Username sort, it makes more sense to limit per user rather than sort by it. no?
As for forum, you can restrict search for a specific forum.
As for reverse order, we didn't plan on implementing such option as we tried to analyze the more likely features that people will use. Let me know what you think.




> Show Results as Threads/Posts


The option you have (or will have once implemented on disboards) is the option to search in the "Original posts only". This searches only in the thread starters (therefore showing "threads"). This means that you will not see matches if they are in replies. Is that adequate for what you are looking for?



Hope it answers all your questions.


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## BoardTracker

Alex2kMommy said:


> Is there some documentation on how the search feature is supposed to work?


Hopefully its intuitive enough.. But I'll try to answer your questions here...



> For instance, if you just enter a word/phrase, should it search through all forums and go back as far as you have data stored?  Or is there some standard criteria it will use unless you specify otherwise, such as "posts within the past week"?


If you just enter a word, it searches ALL the forums and ALL the posts from ALL time. 
To limit time, use the proper option. (Last day/week/month/year)
To limit forum, see the advanced panel.



> I searched on the phrase "chandelier swinger" (a DIS nickname for my DS3) and expected to see posts on the DL Chat thread within the CB.  There were no results returned.
> 
> So I did an advanced search, leaving the word/phrase text the same but entering a username in that field, which I assumed would narrow the search phrase to posts by that person.  I still got no results.


What's DL? Whats CB? 
If you get no results for a certain search, narrowing down the search criteria would not show any results as well, it makes sense. no?
However, I do get results for that term you specified. Here they are:
http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?s=&search=chandelier+swinger
(remember to work with California Gold template, as you later found out)



> When I used the drop-down list for selecting a date range, I was not sure what to select.  Does "Yesterday" refer really to only yesterday, or yesterday through today?  Does "Last month" search only in the prior calendar month (May 1 - 31), or 30 days ago, or 30 days through today, or May 1 through today?


These searches are for "SINCE" the date you selected.
So Since yesterday, Since a week ago, Since a month ago, etc..




> I'm guessing the lack of results has to do with the incomplete indexing, but I'm still not sure if my expectations of how the advanced search works is accurate.


The lack of results had to do with the template selection. 
Granted though, not all data is in the new system yet, but it will get there.

More feedback on the features and other aspects of the new search is most welcome.


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## BoardTracker

By the way... its so great to see that the current complains shifted to be about the California Gold template colors and not the search


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## Dan Murphy

WebmasterAlex said:


> .....new search...


GREAT news, Alex, you caught my interest.    Hope to learn all the ins and outs. 



BoardTracker said:


> ....The relevancy of BoardTracker (the new version just as well) is effective enough to negate the need for such seperate feature.
> If what you are searching for is in the title, and you order by relevancy, you will see this post/thread first, or certainly among the first. If you can do the same with less features/options/checkboxes/... its a good thing. no?
> Try it and see. Let us know what you found.
> 
> *What is relevancy, BT?  Over the almost year we have been dealing with BT, I have never figured out what that is.  I have had a few others ask me too and have never been able to answer them.  From what you are saying here, it seems important and helpful though.*
> 
> Already so.
> We will soon add partial username match as well.
> 
> *EXCELLENT!!*
> 
> Do you think its something that makes sense to add as a feature? Note that replies (and views) are presented in the search results so that searchers can easily identify threads with a lot of replies. Your opinion?
> 
> *Any possibility of adding a notation as to what board the resultant threads are on?  As an example, there are some game boards here and in doing a search, the results might come back where some posts are withing those game boards, but you have absolutely no interest in going there, wasting time only to find you are now on a game board and going back to the search.  The old search (before BT) listed what boards the resultant finds were on.  I know you can search by specific board, but you possible do not know what board you are looking for, BUT do know what boards you do NOT want.*.....





BoardTracker said:


> ........What's DL? Whats CB?
> 
> *DL=Disneyland CB-community board*
> 
> The lack of results had to do with the template selection.
> Granted though, not all data is in the new system yet, but it will get there.
> 
> *Will the others skins be operable also?*
> 
> More feedback on the features and other aspects of the new search is most welcome.
> 
> *Over the past almost year we have not had search, when looking at BT, I have often wondered (may have asked before also), what the 'Category Search' drop-down function does...Arts & Humanities, Government & People, Home & Family, etc.  Way back, I tried to figure it out but never was able to*



Hey Alex, great to see search is back.    And BT, great seeing you here again, welcome back, good to see you. 

I have a few thoughts bolded above throughout the quote.


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## agnes!

Ditto to everything Dan posted .

Maybe someone needs to post a list of DIS acronyms for Mr. BT?  Sometimes I forget that not everyone knows what MVMCP or MNSSHP means...

Yes, I am also wondering about the Califonia Gold skin.  I guess I'm assuming that the Webmasters/Search programming Team are only running the Beta version within the California Gold skin for the moment.  I myself cannot abide that particular color scheme and am excessively fond of the Swan/Dolphin aqua/coral, so unless I need to Search? I'm sticking with the usual.

agnes!
PS - Double ditto to the observations about Relevancy and the drop-down menu with Arts & Humanities, etc.


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## WebmasterAlex

Dan Murphy said:


> GREAT news, Alex, you caught my interest.    Hope to learn all the ins and outs.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hey Alex, great to see search is back.    And BT, great seeing you here again, welcome back, good to see you.
> 
> I have a few thoughts bolded above throughout the quote.



I'll let BT answer most of those but:
Yes it will work on all skins, I put on California Gold on purpose as it is not heavily used and we wanted to limit the load for the beta and test phase

The category thing is really designed for boards that allow searchs across all of the boards that boardtracker indexes, we have our set to only search disboards


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## BoardTracker

Dan Murphy said:
			
		

> Hope to learn all the ins and outs.


Ask and we shall answer 



			
				Dan Murphy said:
			
		

> What is relevancy, BT? Over the almost year we have been dealing with BT, I have never figured out what that is.


Relevancy means that most relevant results show first. Its like when you search google... there are 1000s of results, right? but the top ones are usually the more relevant ones. How does Google know? How do we know? There are statistical ways to measure (likely) relevancy between a document/post and a search term. A part of it is that the more times your searched term appears in the post, the more relevant the post is. And the sooner it appear, the more relevant. That is why things in titles "matter" more, and therefore show higher on the result list.



			
				Dan Murphy said:
			
		

> Any possibility of adding a notation as to what board the resultant threads are on?...


We actually do have this data. The way the search mod is written now, it does not send it as part of the results. But this is something that could be changed. As for how soon can we look into it, it wont be too soon, but it is something we can indeed add in the future.



			
				Dan Murphy said:
			
		

> ...I have often wondered (may have asked before also), what the 'Category Search' drop-down function does...


This option is for limiting results based on the "theme" of the forums.
Some boards are topically very diverse, meaning they have forums about sports, family, finance etc.. forums in BoardTracker are categorized accordingly. This allows us then to offer search not in a specific forum or sub-forum but on all forums matching the category. So "Sports" option will allow you to search all "sports" related forums on Disboards.



			
				agnes! said:
			
		

> ..Maybe someone needs to post a list of DIS acronyms for Mr. BT? Sometimes I forget that not everyone knows what MVMCP or MNSSHP means.....


Oh my god.. 6 letters acronyms :S
I think posting a guide is a good idea


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## Sammie

Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

Also I was able to use it on the Resorts Forum with changing to California Gold. I just clicked on the User Name and Find All Posts and it worked.


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## Mugg Mann

At the moment, it's certainly an improvement over what has existed over the last few months.

One note:

I know that you've issued a caution that it's still "indexing", and that histories may be affected, but I wanted to note that I've tried a few posters who I'm very familiar with, and the histories are inconsistent.

-One poster with thousands of posts has only a two page history dating back only a week.

-Another poster has a history dating back almost three years, but there's a chunk of history missing from the middle of that period and I know for sure that posts are issing from that person.

If the indexing is supposed to be occuring over a set time for all posters evenly that goes progressively further into the past as more data collates, then I can tell you that it isn't working properly. At the moment, histories  of individual posters appear to be quite random.


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## LadyBears

Quote:
Originally Posted by *LadyBears* 

 
_Much better than what we have been dealing with!!

When the improved search is fully functional, will we also have more options such as: ....._

I just wanted to clarify: I know we had access to some of those that I had listed, but what I tried to do was a copy/paste of the search function from another forum.  The results didn't look as pretty because they didn't paste correctly.

Quote:
Recent Posts Search: Show New Posts from the last: days, hours, minutes 
Quote:
Search Titles Only 
The relevancy of BoardTracker (the new version just as well) is effective enough to negate the need for such seperate feature.
If what you are searching for is in the title, and you order by relevancy, you will see this post/thread first, or certainly among the first. If you can do the same with less features/options/checkboxes/... its a good thing. no?
Try it and see. Let us know what you found.

You answered that for me in your detailed answer about "relevancy" in your response to Dan


Quote:
Search by User User Name: 
Already so.
We will soon add partial username match as well.

Cool!


Quote:
Find Threads with At Least/At Most Replies 
Do you think its something that makes sense to add as a feature? Note that replies (and views) are presented in the search results so that searchers can easily identify threads with a lot of replies. Your opinion?


Quote:

Sort Results by: Relevancy/ Title/ Number of Replies/ Number of Views/ Thread Start Date/ Last Posting Date/ User Name/ Forum (in Descending Order in Ascending Order or accending order) 
The supported features are Sort by date (newer first) and by relevancy. 
Last posting date, is basically the post's date, so that covered when searching all posts by date. Thread start date, is covered if you restrict search for "Original posts only". 
As for Username sort, it makes more sense to limit per user rather than sort by it. no?
As for forum, you can restrict search for a specific forum.
As for reverse order, we didn't plan on implementing such option as we tried to analyze the more likely features that people will use. Let me know what you think.

I feel (& I am not speaking for anyone else) that this would help us.  An example: search for chocolate chip cookie recipe or where to find characters.  I would rather view a thread that people have posted answers to rather than view a thread that has had little to no response.  I think this would be very helpful - especially to those who, like me, came here for the vacation planning first (ie: resorts, theme parks, restaurant boards), then found the CB, VMK, Creative & other places later.  I can only imagine the actual count of how many times in one day the same question gets asked on the planning forums.  Also, where Disney information changes things daily, I would also rather have the "newer" information be shown before the "older" information.

A possible suggestion to that would be after doing the search, one could click on the word created, replies or views to "sort" them from most to least or least to most...


Quote:
Show Results as Threads/Posts 
The option you have (or will have once implemented on disboards) is the option to search in the "Original posts only". This searches only in the thread starters (therefore showing "threads"). This means that you will not see matches if they are in replies. Is that adequate for what you are looking for?

yup!

Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions & addressing our concerns.


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## WebmasterAlex

We have a list!

http://www.wdwinfo.com/abbreviations.htm


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## Caskbill

BoardTracker said:


> <snip>...Oh my god.. 6 letters acronyms :S
> I think posting a guide is a good idea



Alex gave you the link to the guide, but the two posted by agnes are:

Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party  (MVMCP)

and 

Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party  (MNSSHP)

These are special events at WDW (Walt Disney World) during the indicated seasons.

You missed the big one:  WWTBAMPI  (Who wants to be a millionaire, play it:  No longer applicable since they have since closed the attraction.)

OK, now you can get back to programming.....


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## mtblujeans

Constructive Comment: I had to 'work backwards' on my search for the "JC Penneys free shipping" thread on the Budget Board....and I still never found it. Started out with "Penneys free shipping", then "Penneys ship", then "Penneys shipping" and ended up with a comment from the Dockers free airline thread.  

But, I CAN look a post up by their maker now...which I really missed.


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## mickeysaver

I am thrilled beyond belief to have search back!!!!  I hate that I have to use this hideous color scheme, but it's nice to be able to find things again.  Maggie


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## travelbug

I must be doing something wrong.  I just tried searching by user name.  I tried my own and it said "Sorry, no matches."  So I tried 3 other users and only one would work.  The other 2 said "Sorry, no matches."  Even the one that did work only gave the threads started by that person, not the individual posts.  

Maybe I'm going to the wrong place to do the search, because I'm not seeing the California Gold color that others mentioned.  I've tried clicking on the word "Search" that has the white arrow beside it.  Then I choose Advanced Search and type in the user name I'm looking for.  I also tried choosing "Search Forums" in the main scrolldown menu, then choosing Advanced Search.  Results were identical both ways.

What am I doing wrong?


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## travelbug

OK, I think I answered my own question.     I changed my choice of color scheme to the California Gold, and now I can search for all those user names with no problem.  I must have missed the part where the search will only function if you switch to California Gold.  I probably didn't read carefully enough.   

Hooray!  I'm off to enjoy the search function now.  I've REALLY missed it!!

Thanks, Alex, for hanging in there to find a solution!


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## thomprod

I was able to search for and display all of my posts successfully.  Three comments:

1.  I did notice the heading at the top of the list of posts still says "Thread/Thread Starter" even though it is actually displaying the title of my post and my username.  In other words, it is not showing the Thread title or thread-starter's username.

2.  This post, that I made minutes ago, does not show up in the list.

3.  If the post is part of a long thread with many pages, the first post in the thread is displayed initially.  There is no indication that the search engine is still searching, but in a few seconds, you are taken to your own post in the thread.  This should happen immediately, or if that's not possible, there should be some indication that you have not yet arrived at your post.

Good work and thank you.


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## BoardTracker

thomprod said:


> I was able to search for and display all of my posts successfully.  Two comments:
> 
> 1.  I did notice the heading at the top of the list of posts still says "Thread/Thread Starter" even though it is actually displaying the title of my post and my username.  In other words, it is not showing the Thread title or thread-starter's username.


That is because the implementation of the search (beta) here on DisBoards is temporary. When the final search is released, both the interface (and terminology) as well as the color scheme  will be proper.



thomprod said:


> 2.  This post, that I made minutes ago, does not show up in the list.


First, it may always take some time for posts to show in the search. Hopefully short enough to not notice, in the future. 
For now, the system is still in beta and is indexing. Ignore the temporal issue for now.



thomprod said:


> 3.  If the post is part of a long thread with many pages, the first post in the thread is displayed initially.  There is no indication that the search engine is still searching, but in a few seconds, you are taken to your own post in the thread.  This should happen immediately, or if that's not possible, there should be some indication that you have not yet arrived at your post.


Nothing that can be done about that. This is simply the basic behavior of the internet. When you are redirected to a specific post (in any HTML page) with an anchor (which looks like #post1231651 for example), it only "jumps" to the right place when the page is fully loaded. If you have very fast internet or if the page is small, it doesn't take much time and is not noticeable. Otherwise, it might take a bit. This has nothing to do with the search actually.



thomprod said:


> Good work and thank you.


You are welcome.
The more feedback, the better..


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## thomprod

BoardTracker said:


> ...You are welcome.
> The more feedback, the better..



I appreciate the speedy response.


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## travelbug

It was working GREAT, and now tonight not working at all.  Did something change?


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## WebmasterAlex

travelbug said:


> It was working GREAT, and now tonight not working at all.  Did something change?



This is still Beta... it's going to have it's up's and down's


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## agnes!

travelbug said:


> It was working GREAT, and now tonight not working at all.  Did something change?




You're not alone travelbug...hope Search returns soon.

agnes!


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## BoardTracker

travelbug said:


> It was working GREAT, and now tonight not working at all.  Did something change?



We are reindexing data now, so you will gradually see the data back in the results as time passes..


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## LBurg93

How come in the Disney Vacation Club Sub-Forum or in a specified forum of DVC, when I try to change it to Calif. Gold it doesn't change? It stays DVC3 color scheme.


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## Dan Murphy

If a forum is a sponsored forum, the color scheme remains whatever is the default for that forum/sponsor.  Theme parks, transportation are similar.


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## LBurg93

Dan Murphy said:


> If a forum is a sponsored forum, the color scheme remains whatever is the default for that forum/sponsor.  Theme parks, transportation are similar.



Thank You


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## thomprod

"Find all posts by <username>", which *had* been working for a bit, has *not* worked for the last week or so.  The search returns the message "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."


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## agnes!

"Find posts by UserName" seems to still be broken.  Any ideas on when it will  be working again?  
I just tried to do a search for my posts from yesterday and came up with the famous "Sorry, no matches..." message  .

agnes!


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## travelbug

BoardTracker said:


> We are reindexing data now, so you will gradually see the data back in the results as time passes..


Any update?  I'm wondering how much time will be passing by before the data is reindexed...  I still can't get the search function to work as it did a few weeks ago.


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## BoardTracker

It is still indexing, if you do a search for something common (like 'disney') and order results by thread start date you can see how far along it is - right now its up to may 6th. Every day you should see it progressing a few days until it catches up.

We have also added some additional search functions not yet available on any other forum search which I think you will all find useful. These will be available soon.


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## Statler

How come the "New Posts" button doesnt work?  It always says "no matches."  It used to show a list of threads that had new posts and the forum that it was in.  That was great.  Can we get that back?


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## BoardTracker

Statler said:


> How come the "New Posts" button doesnt work?  It always says "no matches."  It used to show a list of threads that had new posts and the forum that it was in.  That was great.  Can we get that back?



This is because the indexing didn't catch up yet and 'new posts' just searches for posts in the last 24 hours. When it catches up the new posts link will work fine again.


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## jeffgwins

Does the searching work just in California Gold still? I am using california gold and no matter what i search it is coming up "sorry- no matches......"


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## agnes!

Would it be possible to put an interim message into the buttons for the functions that are impacted by the re-indexing (like New Posts or Search by UserName, etc.)?  A message that states something like "This feature is undergoing a rehab for your DIS'ing enjoyment"?

agnes!


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## Pansy

Am not able to do much with the search feature. Can't find post I made and the search feature comes back "Sorry" if using a word.

Doubt if I can even find this thread again


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## BoardTracker

> Doubt if I can even find this thread again



That is because this thread was started on june 18th and indexing is now up to may 29th - will be a few more days before it catches up.


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## agnes!

Bumping.

agnes!


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## BoardTracker

It has caught up again and should be working fine. For example the 'new posts' link now works.

Older posts are still being spidered and it will take a while to index everything.


----------



## milkabum

I was just wondering, why is it that when a search match comes up, underneath the poster is "unnamed"? Is this just something you guys are fixing?


----------



## BoardTracker

milkabum said:


> I was just wondering, why is it that when a search match comes up, underneath the poster is "unnamed"? Is this just something you guys are fixing?



Shouldn't be like that now - are you using the new version? It only works with the 'california gold' skin at the moment.


----------



## tiggerlover

So if I am looking for a post I made last week, when can I expect to find it?  And how? Thanks.


----------



## BoardTracker

tiggerlover said:


> So if I am looking for a post I made last week, when can I expect to find it?  And how? Thanks.



Try this.


----------



## jemiaule

It seems the find all posts search is not working. I just tried and continue to get "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."

I also tried the link you had above for tiggerlove to try and also get "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."

I do hope this search works soon. I was away from the board for a few months and there are some old posts I would really like to look up and see how the threads turned out.


----------



## BoardTracker

jemiaule said:


> It seems the find all posts search is not working. I just tried and continue to get "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."
> 
> I also tried the link you had above for tiggerlove to try and also get "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."



Works fine for me - are you using the california gold theme?


----------



## travelbug

I just tried a few times to search by username.  (Yes, I'm in California Gold) I got nothing at all, not the little dog and not even a "Sorry, no matches" message.  Nothing.  Any updates on what's going on?  Thanks!


----------



## travelbug

travelbug said:


> I just tried a few times to search by username.  (Yes, I'm in California Gold) I got nothing at all, not the little dog and not even a "Sorry, no matches" message.  Nothing.  Any updates on what's going on?  Thanks!


I'll answer my own post.   Tonight it's working again.  I'm still hoping for an update though, Board Tracker.  How close are we to a fully functional and consistent search option?  Thank you!


----------



## jemiaule

BoardTracker said:


> Works fine for me - are you using the california gold theme?



I am using whatever the default is. I have never made any kind of changes.


----------



## BoardTracker

travelbug said:


> I'll answer my own post.   Tonight it's working again.  I'm still hoping for an update though, Board Tracker.  How close are we to a fully functional and consistent search option?  Thank you!


We estimate about 2 weeks from now.


----------



## travelbug

BoardTracker said:


> We estimate about 2 weeks from now.


That would be awesome!  Thanks for the reply.


----------



## mikkiwikki

agnes! said:


> Bumping.
> 
> agnes!



It DOESNT WORK


----------



## mikkiwikki

search by username doesnt  work UNLESS you have the california gold skin ......


----------



## jfulcer

mikkiwikki said:


> search by username doesnt  work UNLESS you have the california gold skin ......



Yeah?  I _know_ that I said to change to California Gold on that other post in that other thread showing you how to search.  Nobody, nowhere (that I know of), has said that they are going to make it available on all skins yet.   

Patience, grasshopper.


----------



## Dan Murphy

jfulcer said:


> ....Patience, grasshopper.


I just noticed we missed the one year anniversary last week of the new BT search engine.   

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1200933

I do not think it is caught up as of yet in its indexing though.


----------



## flyinglizard

BoardTracker is not working right now for "search all posts" by ID name. I don't know what "California Gold" is... I just know BoardTracker doesn't work!


----------



## agnes!

flyinglizard said:


> BoardTracker is not working right now for "search all posts" by ID name. I don't know what "California Gold" is... I just know BoardTracker doesn't work!



DIS'ers can choose which color scheme they want to DIS in.  I like the Swan & Dolphin pastel coral & aqua/green myself.

Go to the bottom right hand of this page.  There will be a drop-down menu that in your case probably says "Default".  Click on the drop-down & you will see the following choices after Default...
Orlando Blue, Orlando Blue Night, Serenity Green, California Gold, DIS unplugged, etc., etc.
Highlight California Gold.
Click on that.
Now you can do a Search the BoardTracker way.

All available BT Search features will work in the California Gold 'skin', but be aware that the BoardTracker system is still apparently in Beta(testing) mode, so features sometimes come and go.  One of the reasons the California Gold color scheme was chosen for the testing phase is exactly because it is one of the less-favorite DIS 'skins' & therefore wouldn't cause as much of a load on the servers.

agnes!


----------



## bicker

I bet part of the problem, once folks figure out the California Gold skin thing, is that some forums override the user's choice of skin, and force their own skin, thereby denying folks reading that forum direct access to the new search.


----------



## agnes!

And then there is always the ever-popular Yahoo or Google domain-name site-search.  If the BoardTracker Search isn't.

agnes!


----------



## Dan Murphy

I use Google to try to search best I can.


----------



## jfulcer

Ok geek in me again.  Why is this indexing so hard?

1) Query your index to find what the index has as a last message (Message X). 

2) Query the board database to find the 'last message' in the system (Message Y).  

3) Cycle through from Message X to Message Y and view each post using the view post tool:  http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=20594150  (or even a hybrid of this page that shows nothing but the post)

4) Add to Index. 

5) Repeat every 5 minutes.  

Am I just too big of a geek?


----------



## bicker

One hard part about indexing is the load the ETL process has on the database server.  An efficient indexer, such as you propose, would do a great job at keeping an index up to date, but it would seriously degrade the database server's ability to serve end-user needs associated with data retrieval (reading messages) and storage (posting messages), which are the two primary purposes for a message board like the DIS.  Indexing needs to be an activity with secondary priority, respecting the end-users' lack of patience with server-swap times rather than worrying as much as you suggest about index latency affecting search. 

Beyond that, your approach only addresses keeping the index up to date.  Board Tracker's challenge here was to populate the index in the first place.  There were about 18 million messages already posted on the DIS when Board Tracker first started populating its index.  I bet there was a specific reason why they populated the index from start to finish (rather than vice versa) so given what I mentioned above about indexing being a secondary priority activity, it will take a good bit of time to "catch-up" with 18 million messages, given limited processing resources on the database server. 

How's that for geeky?


----------



## BoardTracker

pretty geeky indeed 

Let me turn the notch a bit to uber-geeky though..

jfulcer... who said posts IDs are sequential?  What if the current PostID is 20594802 but the next one is actually 20594902? should the crawler try to read 100 non-existing posts? 
Also, what about boards that use non-numerical post IDs? or ones like the flickr forums that have a combination of IDs from different ranges, where some new posts have IDs of 1003232 and some new ones have IDs like 700000323412? Certainly the system can not read everything from 1003232 to 700000323412 (when we know for a fact that almost nothing exists in the middle.

Furthermore, do you read a post at a time? Or rather full threads and full pages? Why should the crawler do differently? Instead of reading one post at a time, it can do 25 at a time. 

The crawler indeed needs to "hammer" the board as little as possible. Searching a board that doesn't respond to its members just because the crawler is inefficient, now thats a very bad crawler. So the crawler not  only needs to be a secondary priority (which naturally is one of the reasons it takes a while to get to all the data on Disboards) but also not try to needlessly "read" things that either doesn't exist or not urgent. BoardTracker for example doesn't read a thread again and again in hope that there will be new data in it. It "knows" when there are new posts in a thread 

Part of the reason you don't see all the posts in BoardTracker (the newer version) yet is technical issues n our side. It takes time to prepare all the data we have for searching. But the main reason is DisBoards related.. we can't get to all the data as fast as we would have wanted. If we did that, DisBoards servers would have been brought to its knees and the board would slow to a crawl. So the koalas at BoardTracker have to be patient... and so should we 

We are working hard to get the system out by September 5th. That is very soon (in dog's years ) Even then, when we launch the new version for public Beta, not all data in DisBoards will be there. But it will eventually get to all of it. 
"So say we all" [now, thats an UberGeek ending to a post]


----------



## bicker

Just playing devil's advocate for a second... 

It isn't clear to me that a crawler is the most efficient tool for the job.  I'm sure you'd agree that it would be better to access the data natively, rather than via a crawler.  Unless I'm mistaken, that's how the built-in vBulletin search works.  

Also, it seems to me that another approach would have been to work with a backup of The DIS from a specific date, on an app server within your local network -- a copy you could window-dress to look like the real thing, but one you could "hammer" all you'd like because there are no other users access that data set.   Then, once you've rifled through the three or four years worth of data, you can turn your crawler onto the "real" site, looking for changes since the time the copy was made.

I'm absolutely sure there are good reasons why neither of these were attempted.  

I think it is important, thought, to keep in mind that what we're seeing, with these various threads of complaints, is frustration that the process has taken so long, and there has been so little pay-off evident so far, and it isn't clear what pay-off there will be forth-coming.  Arguably, timeline expectations were set (for good or ill, with or without merit) and were, again arguably, not met.  There's got to be acknowledgement of that fact.

Personally, I feel we're getting a good value for our contributions.  I contribute only $60 a year to The DIS, and feel that I get sufficient value for my contribution, but I could understand people feeling different from me.


----------



## BoardTracker

Indeed working directly with the data is a better way to get to the data. As for approach, under that most boards and board owners do not have easy way to supply safe and secure access to the raw data or may not have the technical means to enable that.
However, this approach is something we DO support, technically. But as I said, not something that is being used in almost all cases.

I would agree that frustration may have been caused by delays and unmet expectations. I must note however that we did not set (certainly not intentionally), any timeline and the most we did was stating that we hope the search will be ready at a certain point in time. The new search was released in Beta state and was emphasized to be so.
Having said that, while we are working on the new search, an existing one which works for many of the search needs is fully available to all.


----------



## jfulcer

BoardTracker said:


> jfulcer... who said posts IDs are sequential?  What if the current PostID is 20594802 but the next one is actually 20594902? should the crawler try to read 100 non-existing posts?
> Also, what about boards that use non-numerical post IDs? or ones like the flickr forums that have a combination of IDs from different ranges, where some new posts have IDs of 1003232 and some new ones have IDs like 700000323412? Certainly the system can not read everything from 1003232 to 700000323412 (when we know for a fact that almost nothing exists in the middle.


Every database has a uniquie identifier on every post.  Referential integrity and all.  So don't use post ID, use that.



BoardTracker said:


> Furthermore, do you read a post at a time? Or rather full threads and full pages? Why should the crawler do differently? Instead of reading one post at a time, it can do 25 at a time.



I agree.  So using that Unique Identifier above, ask for 200 posts at a time.  Index that way.  I just mentioned that one method because that's the one that I know of.  It would be _trivial_ for a basic developer to create you a page for each and every database you deal with to do this.



BoardTracker said:


> The crawler indeed needs to "hammer" the board as little as possible.



Query the boards at night.  Add to index during the day.  You could easily gets tens of thousands of records this way.



BoardTracker said:


> Part of the reason you don't see all the posts in BoardTracker (the newer version) yet is technical issues


Again?



BoardTracker said:


> We are working hard to get the system out by September 5th. That is very soon


Boardtracker has repeatedly made promises (coming soon.  Shortly.  Couple of weeks.)  I feel bad that the DISboards has been let down over and over.  I certainly hope that all of this is worth it.

I won't hold my breath on September 5th.  I do programming on the side (should be doing that and not be on the DISboards but...) and am giving my client a release of their software on the 6th.  I know what THEY will do if I don't deliver.  They'll find someone else.



bicker said:


> Just playing devil's advocate for a second...
> 
> It isn't clear to me that a crawler is the most efficient tool for the job.


I agree, it's not.  But a modified crawler would work - they just have to do it right.



bicker said:


> Also, it seems to me that another approach would have been to work with a backup of The DIS from a specific date


I wouldn't even begin to guess how much space 18 million records would take up.



bicker said:


> I'm absolutely sure there are good reasons why neither of these were attempted.



Poorly paid or poorly fed koalas.  You take your pick


----------



## BoardTracker

jfulcer said:


> Every database has a uniquie identifier on every post.  Referential integrity and all.  So don't use post ID, use that.


The point here is that you mentioned a sequential scan. This doesn't work in a non-numerical index or a non-sequential ones. This is the point.




jfulcer said:


> I agree.  So using that Unique Identifier above, ask for 200 posts at a time.  Index that way.  I just mentioned that one method because that's the one that I know of.  It would be _trivial_ for a basic developer to create you a page for each and every database you deal with to do this.


Most board owners are not developers at all. That is why this method is not popular or not trivial.




jfulcer said:


> Query the boards at night.  Add to index during the day.  You could easily gets tens of thousands of records this way.


Scanning has to be ongoing and live, otherwise people will get their posts in the search results in sometimes 24 hours delay or more.




jfulcer said:


> Again?


Nothing new here. Its the same ol same ol. Scanning and indexing hundreds of millions (soon billions) of posts into a new system takes time. A technical fact. Disboards is not the only board in BoardTracker and even Disboards alone has 16 million posts.




jfulcer said:


> Boardtracker has repeatedly made promises (coming soon.  Shortly.  Couple of weeks.)  I feel bad that the DISboards has been let down over and over.  I certainly hope that all of this is worth it.


Disboards can use search now which works. For those that want the added features that the new version offers, more patience is needed. But both your empathy and frustration are duly noted and understood.




jfulcer said:


> I won't hold my breath on September 5th.  I do programming on the side (should be doing that and not be on the DISboards but...) and am giving my client a release of their software on the 6th.  I know what THEY will do if I don't deliver.  They'll find someone else.


We didn't give a release date, and Boardtracker is not a software but a service, and maybe somewhat a more complicated one that you might imagine. As for your clients, they are probably paying you for your software and for your delivery promises. This is not the case here.. nor did we give delivery dates and promises. Even the 5th that we stated is simply a milestone we are trying very hard to meet.




jfulcer said:


> I agree, it's not.  But a modified crawler would work - they just have to do it right.


If you have suggestions for whats 'right' we are happy to hear 




jfulcer said:


> I wouldn't even begin to guess how much space 18 million records would take up.


The reason why we don't work with a backup of disboards has nothing to do with us.


----------



## bicker

jfulcer said:


> It would be _trivial_ for a basic developer to ...


I bet you're wrong about that.  That's really a safe bet, whenever someone starts a sentence with "It would be trivial..." and especially when they start a sentence with "It would be trivial to develop..."   Unless you've done the system engineering analysis, there is no way to know how much time and effort will be involved.  There are almost always challenges that are not readily apparent to the casual observer.  As a developer yourself, you should know that.



jfulcer said:


> Query the boards at night.  Add to index during the day.  You could easily gets tens of thousands of records this way.


18,749,296 / 30,000 = 625 days to index the data.


----------



## BoardTracker

bicker said:


> I bet you're wrong about that.  That's really a safe bet, whenever someone starts a sentence with "It would be trivial..." and especially when they start a sentence with "It would be trivial to develop..."   Unless you've done the system engineering analysis, there is no way to know how much time and effort will be involved.  There are almost always challenges that are not readily apparent to the casual observer.  As a developer yourself, you should know that.
> 
> 18,749,296 / 30,000 = 625 days to index the data.



Right on both accounts  

as for the 625 days... So just think now how much more we are actually scanning a day here without interrupting Disboards to be able to get to all the data in 60 days, and not 600+ days


----------



## bicker

BoardTracker said:


> Scanning has to be ongoing and live, otherwise people will get their posts in the search results in sometimes 24 hours delay or more.


I can attest to that.  We've had some push-back from our customers about some of our ETL activities being off-loaded to the evening, to even-out the load on their application servers.  They want to create a record and have it show up in the search results minutes later.


----------



## annie1995

I have not been able to get the search under a persons user name to ever work.  Am I doing something wrong??!!


----------



## agnes!

annie1995 said:


> I have not been able to get the search under a persons user name to ever work.  Am I doing something wrong??!!



I'm not sure what is working these days with the Search or what isn't...apparently the DIS/BoardTracker still in Beta/testing mode, so features come...features go.  All that aside, are you using the California Gold 'skin'?  
Go down to the bottom left corner of this page.
Your 'skin' menu will probably say 'Default'.
Click on the drop-down, choose 'California Gold'.
You will now be able to access the available Search features.

Other than using BoardTracker, many have reported success using Yahoo or Google to do a domain-name/user-name search.

hth,
agnes!


----------



## PlutoAddict517

Agnes thanks for that tip. Since I switched to the California Gold screen I'm able to use the search section.


----------



## jfulcer

bicker said:


> I bet you're wrong about that.  That's really a safe bet, whenever someone starts a sentence with "It would be trivial..." and especially when they start a sentence with "It would be trivial to develop..."   Unless you've done the system engineering analysis, there is no way to know how much time and effort will be involved.  There are almost always challenges that are not readily apparent to the casual observer.  As a developer yourself, you should know that.
> 
> 18,749,296 / 30,000 = 625 days to index the data.



Oh, I know what's involved.  I know that something that seems like 'one easy page' never really is.  But for as long as Boardtracker has been working on this, and the number of boards they do index, this would really be something that *could* have been written.  Flexible enough to deal with different board configurations.  And yes, I know board owners are not developers.  That would be why Boardtracker develops something and offers it to the board owners as a plug in or value added service.

I agree that people would most likely like to have searches that show up new information imeediately.  But given the choice between NOT having a decent working search for over a year and having delayed searching, I know what I would choose.

Of course I'm on the outside looking in so I don't know everything that is involved.

Whatever.  It's not worth it.


----------



## maddhatir

agnes! said:


> I'm not sure what is working these days with the Search or what isn't...apparently the DIS/BoardTracker still in Beta/testing mode, so features come...features go.  All that aside, are you using the California Gold 'skin'?
> Go down to the bottom left corner of this page.
> Your 'skin' menu will probably say 'Default'.
> Click on the drop-down, choose 'California Gold'.
> You will now be able to access the available Search features.
> 
> Other than using BoardTracker, many have reported success using Yahoo or Google to do a domain-name/user-name search.
> 
> hth,
> agnes!



OMG Agnes!  YOU ROCK!
	

	
	
		
		

		
			
		
		
	


	




I only read this last page and tried your suggestion! Why does the search feature ONLY work with the Gold skin!!?? And it is quite a pur-ty color if I say so myself! 

I always said the search feature on the DIS is worth next to nothing! Wondered why they even had a search feature when it would turn up NOTHING!

YAY!! I can search, I can search! 

I must spread the word to my wench friends!

I am off! ...ooops wrong way......


----------



## travelbug

For the past couple days, I can't get the search by username function to work at all.  The little dog sits there and fills up over and over.  That's it.  No results.  What changed?


----------



## jfulcer

travelbug said:


> For the past couple days, I can't get the search by username function to work at all.  The little dog sits there and fills up over and over.  That's it.  No results.  What changed?



they've stopped feeding the koalas.


----------



## mikkiwikki

jfulcer said:


> Oh, I know what's involved.  I know that something that seems like 'one easy page' never really is.  But for as long as Boardtracker has been working on this, and the number of boards they do index, this would really be something that *could* have been written.  Flexible enough to deal with different board configurations.  And yes, I know board owners are not developers.  That would be why Boardtracker develops something and offers it to the board owners as a plug in or value added service.
> 
> I agree that people would most likely like to have searches that show up new information imeediately.  But given the choice between NOT having a decent working search for over a year and having delayed searching, I know what I would choose.
> 
> Of course I'm on the outside looking in so I don't know everything that is involved.
> 
> Whatever.  It's not worth it.



My thoughts exactly Jeff - If my performance was like this at work....Id be out of a job.


----------



## Shorty82

When is "Find all posts by..." going to work with the normal skin? That is the main thing I search for. I just tried out the California Gold skin and went AHHH!!! That hurts my eyes!" The colors used on that skin are frankly painful! I like using the default skin and shouldn't have to change it to do something simple like look for posts by somebody.

It would be nice if instead of getting "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms." when searching for a user's posts the message would actually be useful and tell me *WHY* none were found. I had to dig through multiple pages on one thread and follow a link to this one to figure out the problem.

From what I've read this has been an ongoing problem for over a year. I understand it takes time to work out bugs but over a year and still no fix for a problem to a popular feature is ridiculus!


*EDIT:*



BoardTracker said:


> That is because the implementation of the search (beta) here on DisBoards is temporary. When the final search is released, both the interface (and terminology) as well as the color scheme  will be proper.



I wouldn't call 3 months (actually a lot longer I know but 3 months since that post) temporary. After reading through this and another thread on this board I'm starting to wonder if these problems will ever be fixed. Specific problems have been mentioned numerous times and many months later the problems are still there.

If there is no longer a problem with searching for usernames please make that feature available on the other skins. Makes sense to me, fix a feature and you make it available to everybody, not leave it on a skin that hurts my eyes just thinking about it (and I was using it for less than 2 minutes).


----------



## Dan Murphy

Last I read, Shorty, was that the BT folk and their koalas were working on it.   Does seem like a very long time, yes, but I keep hearing they are working on it.


----------



## Shorty82

Dan Murphy said:


> Last I read, Shorty, was that the BT folk and their koalas were working on it.   Does seem like a very long time, yes, but I keep hearing they are working on it.



They keep saying they are working on it but we see no fixes nor are we told of any progress (AFAIK). It appears to me that the search system is exactly the same from when I joined four months ago. In other words, doesn't work worth anything. Had to dig and dig to find out the problem and the "solution" (wouldn't call having to use an ugly color scheme a solution). They could at least do a better job of keeping us updated and it would be nice if they would make the search features that are fixed available to everybody.

If at my job I just kept saying "I'm working on it" every time I was asked how something was coming I'd be out of a job. We're the end users of the search system and we have a right to know what is going on with it but we're not being kept up to date real well.


----------



## jfulcer

Shorty82 said:


> We're the end users of the search system and we have a right to know what is going on with it but we're not being kept up to date real well.



Well, we really don't have any rights.  We can ask.  They might tell.  They might not.

I think search is a low priority for some reason.


----------



## agnes!

Since I've seen some recent Search posts on Page 1, thought the most recent WebmasterAlex-Search thread could do with a bump  .

agnes!


----------



## travelbug

Bumping back up.

Today the search function doesn't work at all again when searching by user name.  It only says "Sorry, no matches..." no matter which user name I try.

Could we please get an update from BoardTracker?  Thanks!


----------



## BoardTracker

We are indexing now the latest data, which is the final step before reintroducing the new version of the beta. hopefully in 3-4 days the rest of the backlog data would be fully indexed and we can test-run the new search.


----------



## travelbug

BoardTracker said:


> We are indexing now the latest data, which is the final step before reintroducing the new version of the beta. hopefully in 3-4 days the rest of the backlog data would be fully indexed and we can test-run the new search.


Glad to hear we're close to a test run with full data.  Thanks for the update.


----------



## Shorty82

BoardTracker said:


> We are indexing now the latest data, which is the final step before reintroducing the new version of the beta. hopefully in 3-4 days the rest of the backlog data would be fully indexed and we can test-run the new search.



Thank you for finally letting us know what is going on! I asked nearly 20 days ago in this thread but never got a response.


----------



## dpuck1998

Shorty82 said:


> Thank you for finally letting us know what is going on! I asked nearly 20 days ago in this thread but never got a response.



Don't get too excited...been there done that!


----------



## Shorty82

dpuck1998 said:


> Don't get too excited...been there done that!



At least we have been told something. From all we've been told lately it appeared nothing has been going on with the search engine. I know it isn't possible to tell us every little detail of the work but at least keep us updated every once in a while without being asked. If asked give us something, not apparently ignore the questions. It is annoying that I asked nearly 20 days ago for some information but never got a response from Board Tracker or anybody in charge here.


----------



## bicker

I think what dpuck1998 was referring to is that there have been close-in dates provided before, but those later ended up being for some intermediate milestone in this effort, as once the service was in general use, it became evident that some more work was needed.  Don't be disappointed if the feature doesn't provide all you could hope for, later this week.


----------



## agnes!

bicker said:


> ...Don't be disappointed if the feature doesn't provide all you could hope for, later this week.




What is, *is*.  I'm not disappointed now, I don't plan on being disappointed in the future.  But that's kind of because I haven't used the site Search lately, anymore I usually go with Google or Yahoo site-searches.  I'll take another stab at it when the most recent indexing is integrated into the latest beta-version of DIS' BoardTracker (and that looks like it might be around/after Wednesday of this coming week).

Thanks to BoardTracker for posting the most recent update.
agnes!


----------



## BoardTracker

Just an update for the interested parties..

We are in the process of releasing the new Beta now.
On the site itself (under v2.boardtracker.com) you can already see the new search. Here on the board it will be reenabled soon. 
We estimate that new data will start showing in the next 48 hours.

(Search will be extremely slow at first, but speed will be worked on right after new data starts appearing)


----------



## BoardTracker

Another update, the search feature on the board works now.
New(er) data will start appearing in the next 36 hours.
(We will also be working on the performance of search in the coming weeks).


----------



## Dan Murphy

BoardTracker said:


> Another update, the search feature on the board works now.
> New(er) data will start appearing in the next 36 hours.
> (We will also be working on the performance of search in the coming weeks).


Should ANY results show yet?  I put my name in, got this........



> Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.


----------



## dpuck1998

Dan Murphy said:


> Should ANY results show yet?  I put my name in, got this........



You mean its not working?  I'll try...maybe you typed your name in wrong


----------



## dpuck1998

I actually got some results in a user name search...perhaps were on the right track.  I'll keep stress testing....


----------



## BoardTracker

travelbug's posts... http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=&order=1&user=travelbug&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1&styleid=43
Dan Murphy's posts... http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.p...er=Dan+Murphy&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1&styleid=43
agnes!'s posts... http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=&order=1&user=agnes!&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1&styleid=43
and.. of course.. Our posts... http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.p...=BoardTracker&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1&styleid=43

can of course also combine it with text search..
Dan's posts about Canada http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.p...er=Dan+Murphy&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1&styleid=43


and soon, more features like OP vs Replies, search in title only and much more..

here is a preview example of search in title only AND in OPs only, for a specific user... (searching for Dan Murphy's OPs containing the word Canada in the title only).
http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.p...phy&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1&oplimit=1&styleid=43

(Again, remember that at the moment the new search is on California gold template only)

Dan Murphy? are you having problem seeing the results or the above links work?

Anyone... any thoughts?


----------



## travelbug

BoardTracker said:


> travelbug's posts... http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=&order=1&user=travelbug&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1&styleid=43
> 
> Anyone... any thoughts?


I clicked on this link, and also tried searching for my posts from scratch.  In both cases, I got only 2 posts from 2007.  The rest of page 1 was from 2003-2005.  When I tried to click to bring up a second page (tried clicking on a number and also on "Next"), I got "Sorry, no matches...". 

I also tried calling up Dan's posts.  I got randomly selected posts between 2001 and 2007 on page 1.  Again, when I tried to view another page, I got "Sorry, no matches...".   

Should the posts be in order by most recent?  Where are things at for being able to call up a complete list of posts, rather than just a random few?

Thanks for the update.  I'll keep watching for further information on how it's going.


----------



## Dan Murphy

BoardTracker said:


> .......(Again, remember that at the moment the new search is on California gold template only)
> 
> Dan Murphy? are you having problem seeing the results or the above links work?.....


Hi BT.

I see them now, in CG.  I did not know it was still limited to CG.  Looking for more good things to come, progress is being made.


----------



## mikkiwikki

BoardTracker said:


> Anyone... any thoughts?



Last time I offered feedback I got slapped with a bunch of infractions...
So dont expect me to offer any!


----------



## mikkiwikki

Shorty82 said:


> At least we have been told something. From all we've been told lately it appeared nothing has been going on with the search engine. I know it isn't possible to tell us every little detail of the work but at least keep us updated every once in a while without being asked. If asked give us something, not apparently ignore the questions. It is annoying that I asked nearly 20 days ago for some information but never got a response from Board Tracker or anybody in charge here.



Carrreeeful that sounded mildly sarcastic....TRUE ...but sarcastic.
Infractions are dolled out regularly here.


----------



## Shorty82

Dan Murphy said:


> Hi BT.
> 
> I see them now, in CG.  I did not know it was still limited to CG.



That's easy to do considering BT did not word his post well.



BoardTracker said:


> Another update, _the search feature on the board_ works now.
> New(er) data will start appearing in the next 36 hours.
> (We will also be working on the performance of search in the coming weeks).



With how it is worded this post tells me that it works on the entire board now. You didn't say, "in California Gold", he said "on the board" which applies to the entire board in my mind.



BoardTracker said:


> (Again, remember that at the moment the new search is on California gold template only)



That's the problem, your previous post said the search feature on the board works now, not just in CG, where I thought it had been working anyway.


----------



## Pez Pez

Hi, 

I am not sure if I am in the right area for help. I am unable to search by poster, it always comes up with nothing found. Can someone give me a hand, or direct me.

TIA


----------



## Shorty82

Pez Pez said:


> Hi,
> 
> I am not sure if I am in the right area for help. I am unable to search by poster, it always comes up with nothing found. Can someone give me a hand, or direct me.
> 
> TIA



As mentioned by me in the previous post and a little above the search only works if you use the California Gold skin.


----------



## BoardTracker

travelbug said:


> I clicked on this link, and also tried searching for my posts from scratch.  In both cases, I got only 2 posts from 2007.  The rest of page 1 was from 2003-2005.  When I tried to click to bring up a second page (tried clicking on a number and also on "Next"), I got "Sorry, no matches...".


Can you please supply me with:
1. the URL of the page you got to
2. what did you get
3. what did you expect to get

That will help us look into it. (That is true for any report about search errors/queries actually)

For example, note that getting only few results might mean that in the "advanced" options, the OP limit was activated. The advanced options are carried over from one search to the other, when you "refine" searches on the results pages.. so have a look into the advanced options



travelbug said:


> I also tried calling up Dan's posts.  I got randomly selected posts between 2001 and 2007 on page 1.  Again, when I tried to view another page, I got "Sorry, no matches...".


We fixed the next pages links (there was a bug there).
Should work now.



travelbug said:


> Should the posts be in order by most recent?  Where are things at for being able to call up a complete list of posts, rather than just a random few?


Posts are ordered by relevancy by default. Note though that at the moment the date ordering is slow beyond belief  this will be worked on in the near future as well as other general speed enhancements


----------



## BoardTracker

Update: travelbug: the reason why you saw few posts from 2001 at the beginning was a bug. We will be addressing it soon and it will be corrected.


----------



## Dan Murphy

BoardTracker said:


> .....Posts are ordered by relevancy.....


What exactly does that mean, relevancy, in this regard, searching for information?


----------



## BoardTracker

Dan Murphy said:


> What exactly does that mean, relevancy, in this regard, searching for information?



Remember that you can search for all posts by Dan Murphy that contain the word 'resort'.. in that case, relevancy has a meaning.
If you only search by author name, the relevancy has no meaning. In such case, the order of the results is likely to mean very little or make very little sense. If I wanted to see the results of all posts by an individual, in chronological (reverse) order, I would choose ordering by date.


----------



## dburg30

Curious again as to why not just use the built in search feature of vbulletin?  Maybe there has been a post made eons ago about it.


----------



## Shorty82

dburg30 said:


> Curious again as to why not just use the built in search feature of vbulletin?  Maybe there has been a post made eons ago about it.



My understanding is that it is because of the size of the board and speed issues. There are so many posts to search through and so many people searching it slowed the server way down so they decided to move the search to an outside provider.


----------



## travelbug

BoardTracker said:


> Can you please supply me with:
> 1. the URL of the page you got to
> 2. what did you get
> 3. what did you expect to get


I went about it a little differently this time.  I wanted to see if I could view all my posts starting with what I've posted as recently as yesterday.  I chose to sort by thread start date and to find posts from any date.  I didn't enter a key word.  

I got several posts from 2001 for starters (I know that's a bug that will be fixed) and then posts from Sept. of '07.  I'm not sure if it's all my posts from Sept. of '07 or just selected ones.  But nothing came up from Oct. or Nov.  Are more recent results available yet?

Here's the URL for the results I got.

http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=&order=0&user=travelbug&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1

I think my mistake earlier was not changing the "relevancy" default to sort by thread start date.  Now if we can get search results to include complete data, especially very recent data, we should be all set.  

Thank you, Board Tracker.


----------



## LadyLuc361

Testing to see if my Sig still works?


----------



## BoardTracker

Update: Date order bug is fixed


----------



## dburg30

Shorty82 said:


> My understanding is that it is because of the size of the board and speed issues. There are so many posts to search through and so many people searching it slowed the server way down so they decided to move the search to an outside provider.



Which is still slow and seemingly doesnt work.. Now of course I cant be sure of that, but I find it amazing there are zero posts in the photography forum having to do with 'storage' .  Now maybe there arent, but sure seems suprising.


----------



## Shorty82

dburg30 said:


> Which is still slow and seemingly doesnt work.. Now of course I cant be sure of that, but I find it amazing there are zero posts in the photography forum having to do with 'storage' .  Now maybe there arent, but sure seems suprising.



That's because the search doesn't work yet, even though they've been working on it for a LONG time. This thread and a few others testify to that.


----------



## jfulcer

dburg30 said:


> Which is still slow and seemingly doesnt work.. Now of course I cant be sure of that, but I find it amazing there are zero posts in the photography forum having to do with 'storage' .  Now maybe there arent, but sure seems suprising.



Switch to the California Gold skin (bottom left of your screen) and do the search.  It's slow, but it'll find it.  I just tried it and there's some links.


----------



## bicker

dburg30 said:


> Which is still slow and seemingly doesnt work..


The point is that by *not *using the *built-in* vBulletin search feature, the message boards themselves are not *ground to a halt* by the act of indexing the postings for search... instead that work load is off-loaded to someone else's servers (BoardTracker's), so the DIS' servers can focus on providing us end-users the fastest reading and posting performance.


----------



## BoardTracker

Shorty82 said:


> That's because the search doesn't work yet, even though they've been working on it for a LONG time. This thread and a few others testify to that.


It works if you try it.


----------



## dburg30

jfulcer said:


> Switch to the California Gold skin (bottom left of your screen) and do the search.  It's slow, but it'll find it.  I just tried it and there's some links.



Am on CA gold..


----------



## BoardTracker

dburg30 said:


> Am on CA gold..


Please provide:
1. the URL of the page you got to
2. what did you get
3. what did you expect to get


----------



## Dan Murphy

BoardTracker said:


> Another update, the search feature on the board works now.
> New(er) data will start appearing in the next 36 hours.
> (We will also be working on the performance of search in the coming weeks).


Any update this past month??


----------



## dpuck1998

My latest test shows post up to Nov 23rd.  Will this be how the seach functions or will they get to "real time" at some point??


----------



## Dan Murphy

> BoardTracker said:
> 
> 
> 
> Another update, the search feature on the board works now.
> New(er) data will start appearing in the next 36 hours.
> (We will also be working on the performance of search in the coming weeks).
> 
> 
> 
> Any update this past month??
Click to expand...


----------



## BoardTracker

http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=pictures&order=1&user=Dan+Murphy&scope=1&cat=1&frm=-1
A search for your own posts from the last week, containing the word "picture(s)"

So at the moment it already has posts from the last week.
While coverage is still getting better, it already has new data, it already allows you to search for replies, it already allows you to search for posts of a certain individual...

Thoughts? remarks?


----------



## Dan Murphy

> Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.


----------



## BoardTracker

(See below attached pic)
We will check it periodically in the near future to see if there are consistency issues. In the meantime, can you confirm that you used the correct (California Gold) template?


----------



## Dan Murphy

Did not use CG.  I forgot.  We are still limited to that one?


----------



## Dan Murphy

Any progress updates??


----------



## swimmingneno

Aisling said:


> Ok, the Search won't go father back than March 3, 2007.  My Search listed 234 pages, but I'm stuck on page 40, and it won't budge.  I keep clicking "Next" , and clicking in the next page number, and it looks like it's searching, but it keeps going bak to page 40.



I just searched, and a thread came up from 03'


----------



## BoardTracker

swimmingneno said:


> I just searched, and a thread came up from 03'



What's the URL of the search results?

Note: we are upgrading the infrastructure of the new version of BoardTracker, a move which will greatly expedite the speed of searches. Hope to finish the upgrade in the next few hours..


----------



## fan of the TTA

BoardTracker said:


> What's the URL of the search results?
> 
> Note: we are upgrading the infrastructure of the new version of BoardTracker, a move which will greatly expedite the speed of searches. Hope to finish the upgrade in the next few hours..





upgrades are cool. look forward to it


----------



## traci

i need me some search


----------



## gmark2000

I'm sorry but Boardtracker really sucks at being a search function for vBulletin.


----------



## BoardTracker

gmark2000 said:


> I'm sorry but Boardtracker really sucks at being a search function for vBulletin.


How is that?
What do you fail to do or missing?


----------



## gmark2000

I'm on dozens of other vBulletin-based forums and I certainly know how search should work.  DISBoards is the only one I know that employs your solution.

I plug in my search terms, clicking Advanced search both in the drop-down and when it brings up the search page, and more than half of the time the effort yields no results.

Look below in the "Related Threads:" Box.  How are threads from two years ago that are not even close to being relevant, demonstrating that your software works?

IMHO, DISBoards have been sold a bill of goods, unless this is an opensource offering.


----------



## BoardTracker

gmark2000 said:


> I'm on dozens of other vBulletin-based forums and I certainly know how search should work.  DISBoards is the only one I know that employs your solution.
> 
> I plug in my search terms, clicking Advanced search both in the drop-down and when it brings up the search page, and more than half of the time the effort yields no results.
> 
> Look below in the "Related Threads:" Box.  How are threads from two years ago that are not even close to being relevant, demonstrating that your software works?
> 
> IMHO, DISBoards have been sold a bill of goods, unless this is an opensource offering.



Your complaint is a little ineffective.
First, Disboards is not the only one using BoardTracker search.
Second, Disboards has been using the built in search and it brought the entire site down. That is why its using BoardTracker search. And as you can see, Disboards works.
Third, Related threads has nothing to do with search. So your complaint about this is totally irrelevant to search.

The part which interests me is :
_"I plug in my search terms, clicking Advanced search both in the drop-down and when it brings up the search page, and more than half of the time the effort yields no results."_
But as we said in the past, please supply a link so we can test what you say and see if there is a problem and why.
Do you see any failed searches? It so, please provide the URL so we can see it too.

Last note: Note that DisBoards is using the beta version of the new search, which will be in beta in the next few days as well until we finish stabilizing it. It does however include features which were warmly requested by members here, including replies search, member search etc..


----------



## Statler

I did a search in the Theme Parks board for "MNSSHP" and it told me there were no matches.

http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=mnsshp&order=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=2

A search of "Polynesian" in the resorts board shows no matches.

http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=polynesian&order=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=12

A search of "California Grill" in the resaurant board shows no matches.

http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=california+grill&order=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=14

Quite frankly I can't get it to search for anything right now.  Also, when I click on "New posts" the little blue dog just loads never displays anything.


----------



## BoardTracker

Here is how search in specific forums work...
When you click on Advanced search, you need to select ALL the forums you want to search in.

here are some examples..


Statler said:


> I did a search in the Theme Parks board for "MNSSHP" and it told me there were no matches.
> http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=mnsshp&order=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=2


Your search above searches only in Theme Parks Attractions and Strategies but NOT in its subforums. when you select the forums you want to search, select ALL the forums (by either dragging the mouse while selecting, or pressing the Control key and clicking the forums. Here is a search in that forum AND its subforums.. as you can see, you have results in the subforums..
http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.p...=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=2&frm=108&frm=147&frm=161



Statler said:


> A search of "Polynesian" in the resorts board shows no matches.
> http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=polynesian&order=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=12


As explained above..
http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.p...r=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=12&frm=93&frm=110



Statler said:


> A search of "California Grill" in the resaurant board shows no matches.
> http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=california+grill&order=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=14


Lastly.. http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.p...=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=14&frm=116&frm=127


----------



## Dan Murphy

BoardTracker said:


> Here is how search in specific forums work...
> When you click on Advanced search, you need to select ALL the forums you want to search in.
> 
> here are some examples..
> 
> Your search above searches only in Theme Parks Attractions and Strategies but NOT in its subforums. when you select the forums you want to search, select ALL the forums (by either dragging the mouse while selecting, or pressing the Control key and clicking the forums. Here is a search in that forum AND its subforums.. as you can see, you have results in the subforums..
> http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.p...=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=2&frm=108&frm=147&frm=161......


I tried this one, seems like it is searching ONLY the sub forums.  I looked at several pages of results, seems they are all from the  	
_Doing the Happy Dance!_ sub forum.  I have to imagine something as popular and discussed as much as MNSSHP would have many posts in the regular, parent forum also.  Does that search eliminate the parent and only search the subs?


----------



## Statler

BoardTracker said:


> Here is how search in specific forums work...
> When you click on Advanced search, you need to select ALL the forums you want to search in.
> 
> here are some examples..
> 
> Your search above searches only in Theme Parks Attractions and Strategies but NOT in its subforums. when you select the forums you want to search, select ALL the forums (by either dragging the mouse while selecting, or pressing the Control key and clicking the forums. Here is a search in that forum AND its subforums.. as you can see, you have results in the subforums..
> http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.p...=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=2&frm=108&frm=147&frm=161
> 
> 
> As explained above..
> http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.p...r=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=12&frm=93&frm=110
> 
> 
> Lastly.. http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.p...=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=14&frm=116&frm=127



What if you don't want to search the subforums?  I just want to search the Theme Park Attractions and Strategy board for MNSSHP.

I don't want to seem rude, but here is what I expect from a search feature:  

1.) If I am looking at the main Theme Park and strategies page, I want to go click on the little box that says "Search this forum"  I want to enter a phrase or word like "MNSSHP".  Then I want to be redirected to a page that lists all the threads in which MNSSHP appears.

2.) If I am in the main search page I want to be able to put a word in the search box and have the option to just show threads where the search phrase is in the title of a thread.  

It seems that Boardtracker tries and fails at number 1 and doesnt give me the option of number 2.

Here is a thread on the first page of the Theme Parks Attractions and Strategies board.  It deals with MVMCP.  http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1736763

How would I be able to search for MVMCP and have that thread show up first, since it the most recent thread in which MVMCP appears?


----------



## BoardTracker

Dan Murphy said:


> I tried this one, seems like it is searching ONLY the sub forums.  I looked at several pages of results, seems they are all from the _Doing the Happy Dance!_ sub forum.  I have to imagine something as popular and discussed as much as MNSSHP would have many posts in the regular, parent forum also.  Does that search eliminate the parent and only search the subs?


It can search whatever you want, forums or subforums. I was just pointing out and giving examples how to search the SUBforums as well.. one only need to select them. 

we will soon look into why/if there are no items with the given search term in the specific parent forum on that category..




Statler said:


> What if you don't want to search the subforums?  I just want to search the Theme Park Attractions and Strategy board for MNSSHP.


then your original search is indeed the right one. As stated above, we will look to see why there are no results for that one..



Statler said:


> I don't want to seem rude, but here is what I expect from a search feature:


You are not rude at all for pointing out things.



Statler said:


> 1.) If I am looking at the main Theme Park and strategies page, I want to go click on the little box that says "Search this forum"  I want to enter a phrase or word like "MNSSHP".  Then I want to be redirected to a page that lists all the threads in which MNSSHP appears.


Thats something you are able to do as said. As for whether or not you can do if from the forum page or not, this is not something that relates to BoardTracker directly, but to the page on Disboards. This is doable though.



Statler said:


> 2.) If I am in the main search page I want to be able to put a word in the search box and have the option to just show threads where the search phrase is in the title of a thread.


Searching for a specific word in the title only, is possible now with the new version.
When you want to search a word in the title only, put "Title:" before the word.. Note - Capital T.
Here is an example..
Searching canada in both the Title and the Post: http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=canada&order=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1

Searching canada in both the Title ONLY: http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=Title:canada&order=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1



Statler said:


> It seems that Boardtracker tries and fails at number 1 and doesnt give me the option of number 2.


As demonstrated above, BoardTracker succeeds in both. Can you show how/where it doesn't? Or confirm that it does?



Statler said:


> Here is a thread on the first page of the Theme Parks Attractions and Strategies board.  It deals with MVMCP.  http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1736763
> 
> How would I be able to search for MVMCP and have that thread show up first, since it the most recent thread in which MVMCP appears?


Here is how...
First, note that it might be that the specific post/thread you are looking at is not (yet) in BoardTracker index. This happens sometimes in general, and more specifically - now when its in beta. But it should all be in it eventually..
Back to the issue.. You can search by date. Grated, it is while we stabilize the system, a little sensitive when it comes to date-base ordering, but you can indeed to that..

The following is searching for MVMCP, date ordered http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=MVMCP&order=0&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1
Note that there are actually newer posts about this subject than the post you mentioned..
BoardTracker has also the ability to limit searches to OPs (original posts) only. While this is not yet enabled in the interface on DisBaords, its possible. Here is a direct link to such a search, still date-ordered..
http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=MVMCP&order=0&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1&isop=1

There are actually many features in the new BooardTracker search that are very interesting..
For example, when you are searching for 'talk', it gives you results for 'talking', 'talks', 'talked' etc.. You can force the search to look for 'talk' only by searching for the word with a capital first letter (Talk).
And there are many other features..

Hope it helps and hopes it changes some of your views about BoardTracker search.


----------



## Dan Murphy

Why, if I do a search for EMH (very common topic, both in topic title and replies) on the Theme Park board, I get a 'no match'?

http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=EMH&order=0&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=2


----------



## BoardTracker

Dan Murphy said:


> Why, if I do a search for EMH (very common topic, both in topic title and replies) on the Theme Park board, I get a 'no match'?
> 
> http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=EMH&order=0&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=2



That was an excellent question.
You SHOULD have been getting results..
And now you DO get results.
This was a bug.
It is now fixed.

Which ALSO fixed Statler search issue from before with search in the Themepark attractions and other 'single forums' searches.. (for example: http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=mnsshp&order=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=2)


----------



## Statler

BoardTracker said:


> It can search whatever you want, forums or subforums. I was just pointing out and giving examples how to search the SUBforums as well.. one only need to select them.
> 
> we will soon look into why/if there are no items with the given search term in the specific parent forum on that category..
> 
> 
> 
> then your original search is indeed the right one. As stated above, we will look to see why there are no results for that one..
> 
> 
> You are not rude at all for pointing out things.
> 
> 
> Thats something you are able to do as said. As for whether or not you can do if from the forum page or not, this is not something that relates to BoardTracker directly, but to the page on Disboards. This is doable though.
> 
> 
> Searching for a specific word in the title only, is possible now with the new version.
> When you want to search a word in the title only, put "Title:" before the word.. Note - Capital T.
> Here is an example..
> Searching canada in both the Title and the Post: http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=canada&order=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1
> 
> Searching canada in both the Title ONLY: http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=Title:canada&order=1&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1
> 
> 
> As demonstrated above, BoardTracker succeeds in both. Can you show how/where it doesn't? Or confirm that it does?
> 
> 
> Here is how...
> First, note that it might be that the specific post/thread you are looking at is not (yet) in BoardTracker index. This happens sometimes in general, and more specifically - now when its in beta. But it should all be in it eventually..
> Back to the issue.. You can search by date. Grated, it is while we stabilize the system, a little sensitive when it comes to date-base ordering, but you can indeed to that..
> 
> The following is searching for MVMCP, date ordered http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=MVMCP&order=0&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1
> Note that there are actually newer posts about this subject than the post you mentioned..
> BoardTracker has also the ability to limit searches to OPs (original posts) only. While this is not yet enabled in the interface on DisBaords, its possible. Here is a direct link to such a search, still date-ordered..
> http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?search=MVMCP&order=0&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1&isop=1
> 
> There are actually many features in the new BooardTracker search that are very interesting..
> For example, when you are searching for 'talk', it gives you results for 'talking', 'talks', 'talked' etc.. You can force the search to look for 'talk' only by searching for the word with a capital first letter (Talk).
> And there are many other features..
> 
> Hope it helps and hopes it changes some of your views about BoardTracker search.




I just went to the search and typed "Title:MNSSHP" and selected the Theme Park forum and got no matches.  

I am intrigued by the 2nd link you gave about MVMCP.  Is it possible to have the results posted by threads instead of by posts?  I don't like having 10 posts from the same thread show up on the first page.  It would be much easier to just list the thread.

I'm sorry to be nitpicky and I really appreciate you taking the time to help.

edit:  Just saw your last post it seemed like you fixed something big.  That seems to make it much easier.


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## BoardTracker

Statler said:


> I am intrigued by the 2nd link you gave about MVMCP.  Is it possible to have the results posted by threads instead of by posts?  I don't like having 10 posts from the same thread show up on the first page.  It would be much easier to just list the thread.


The ability to search OPs only is there in BoardTracker. It just needs DisBoards to modift the search form to add this checkbox. This is something for WebmasterAlex to update. We will release the new board module soon that will have this option in, so I assume that in the next update of Disboard's interface it might already be in.
For now, just add &oplimit=1 to the search URL and press enter, AFTER you first search all posts.


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## ScottakaMickey

The best way to find threads on the DIS is using Google.  I have rarely been able to get the search to work on the DIS, once last year where I had to change the color or something like that and then it worked.

I tried this evening and most of the time it didn't do anything and then one search it said it had 8 pages of results, but no results were displayed.  I went to google and found it right on the first page.


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## Dan Murphy

Trying to search "Epcot", comes up with 

Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.


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## tinkerrn

what is wrong with the search engine?  I have tried since yesterday to use it and it just says 'Sorry-no matches'.

is there something else I can try?


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## Dan Murphy

Best choice I have been able to use over the past year and a half we have not had search is a Google site search.  Go to Google, type in what you are looking for, followed by *site:disboards.com* like *Epcot site:disboards.com*

http://www.google.com/search?q=Epco...avclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS229US230


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## tinkerrn

yes, thank you!  I can now search the disboards!!!  The google option is very fast!!!   


a thousand thank yous!!!!


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## dpuck1998

http://www.disboards.com/searchbt.php?s=&search=waterpark+kids

This search returned nothing....I am using california gold....


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## agnes!

Every time I've tried The DIS/BoardTracker Search it hasn't worked for me (in quite a while), no matter what skin I would choose.  So now I just do a Google site-search using the domain-name of disboards.com".  Every time I get results instead of 'Sorry - no matches'.  Some folks say that Yahoo search works well.

agnes!


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## Kristineamb

What about _*New Posts *_or _*Today's Posts*_


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## agnes!

Kristineamb said:


> What about _*New Posts *_or _*Today's Posts*_



Sorry, I don't know about New Posts.  I'm not sure that New Posts is connected with the The DIS' BoardTracker 'search' engine, but in any case the DIS'er 'BoardTracker' hasn't posted since February.  Maybe one of the Tech Support Mods can answer your question.  Either that, or maybe PM one of the Webmasters.

Good luck,
agnes!


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## Kristineamb

bump


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## agnes!

All I know from reading this board is that 'New Posts' hasn't worked at all in quite a while.  'New Posts' seems to have been a popular feature - it does get asked about regularly on this board.

agnes!


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## bicker

The best substitute for New Posts is the RSS feeds, which even allow you to specify which forums to draw from, and better yet, only show new Threads.


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## Kristineamb

bicker said:


> The best substitute for New Posts is the RSS feeds, which even allow you to specify which forums to draw from, and better yet, only show new Threads.



Thanks for the tip!


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## bicker

Some more on using the RSS feeds....  you can "add" them together.  For example, this is the RSS feed for the Community Board:
http://www.disboards.com/external.php?type=RSS2&forumids=33
And this is the RSS feed for the Theme Parks Board:
http://www.disboards.com/external.php?type=RSS2&forumids=2
So you can set up *one *RSS feed like this:
http://www.disboards.com/external.php?type=RSS2&forumids=33,2
That'll put the two forums together in one RSS feed.


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