Forum Article Search Improvement Is this possible?

[Mich 0]

A suggestion to improve the site search engine function.

 

I wanted to put a link in one of my recent posts to a tutorial I did on Proper Introductions, so I did a search to find it.

 

"proper introduction" (without the quotes) in all forums rendered 897 results.

 

Then I did a search for "+proper +introductions" (again without the quotes) in all forums rendered 13 results, none of which were my tutorial.

 

So I went to "+proper +introductions" (no quotes again) in just the tutorial forum and got

Unfortunately your search didn't return any results.

Try broadening the search parameters by searching by different keywords or altering the format of your search.

Remember to use the wildcard '*' to increase the number of matches. Apple* will match 'apple' and 'apples'.

I finally went to the tutorial forum index page and chased down my submission finding it on page 2 of that section.

 

When I finally got to it at http://forums.xisto.com/topic/39196-how-to-make-a-proper-introduction-not-just-hi-i-am-here/ I guess why the search engine didn't find it is because those words are not contained within the tutorial itself, but only in the title. (I have jumped in and edited a new line at the top to fix this. Now it is found right away.)

 

My suggestions would be, if at all possible, that the search engine take into it's search criterion, the titles of posts.

 

If this is not possible, then I suggest to everybody that their title, if relevent to the subject, be repeated in the body of the post so people can find it more easily. It is very frustrating to run a search to see if a subject such as proper introductions has already been discussed and not find anything, only to discover later that it has, and the search engine missed it because it doesn't search titles. I would suspect this is why a lot of duplicate subjects appear on forums and so many warnings are issued about this.

Edited August 21, 2006 by BuffaloHELP (see edit history)

[TypoMage 0]

See it is people like you they need to improve Xisto. I think that is a good reason why people double post. So Admin and other people that work on Xisto fix this problem. I did not even knw oabout it untill now. Thankyou for posting that.

[Plenoptic 0]

You actually can search throug the titles instead of the post. All you have to do is click more options, and then instead of clicking "Search entire post" you can choose, "Search topics only" If you do that and perform your search it narrows it down and I found your topic right away. Hopefully this solves the problem. If you were to do both post and topic though I think that'd just make it too complicated which is why they have them separate but it might be nice to have them on first page to make things easier.

[BuffaloHelp 24]

The searching is sorted by the last date replied, after pinned topics. Thus for this reason, not many topics are pinned unless is it crutial to Xisto forum and hosting related topics.This brings to my constant nagging of "make your topic title specific and detailed." When a member uses correct key words for naming a topic title, the more response one will get from posting a quality post. This will lead to more other members participating on a given topic, which will lead to recent replies date showing.So, to summarize when a member creates a topic that is quality contribution the more member will participate in the discussion. Then, this article will show up earlist on the search list.And thanks Plenoptic for discussing the second aspect of search forum option.

[darran 0]

I would like to list out a feature which I feel should be improved. I was trying to search for a good wmv converter to avi format, and thus I used the abbreviations wmv and avi. And it says my minimum search string should be more than 4 characters. The thing is, people refer this video formats using their abbreviations, you don't see people using i want to convert windows media video format to audio interlace video format. I hope Xisto will limit the search string to 3 characters, that would be more reasonable and allow us to search extension related topics (swf questions, wmv convertion, open thm files ... etc)Thanks

[BuffaloHelp 24]

Minimum 3 letter search would mean high CPU usage... words searching for "THE, AND, BUT, WHO, YOU" etc. You can see the search would result thousands of returns.So, you have to be creative when searching key words. For example, 'wave convert', or 'video edit' when searching converters. Although search words are not in your target you are betting on words that might have been used to reply/post to a topic you're searching.You can also refine your topic search by limited to "SEARCH TOPIC TITLE" instead of the whole post content.

[darran 0]

Minimum 3 letter search would mean high CPU usage... words searching for "THE, AND, BUT, WHO, YOU" etc. You can see the search would result thousands of returns.
So, you have to be creative when searching key words. For example, 'wave convert', or 'video edit' when searching converters. Although search words are not in your target you are betting on words that might have been used to reply/post to a topic you're searching.

You can also refine your topic search by limited to "SEARCH TOPIC TITLE" instead of the whole post content.

I know what you are getting at, but it is really or almost impossible to find another word for wmv, this is what people recognise it as. I could try searching for "video converters" but then I realise I would be getting lots of results which does not even give me the answer I want, I could get mpg converters, avi converters, swf converts ... etc but probably not wmv converters. Is there a possiblility of deleting the 3 character boundary and seach for a phrase instead? Something like "wmv converters" and it will search based on this string? When searching for the topic I wanted, I already selected them to search only in the title.

[BuffaloHelp 24]

The search feature is a built-in function of IPB. This is another reason that topic title is very important to this forum. It's all about searching.If your quest for finding an answer is unsuccessful, all you have to do is post your question in most relevant topic. for example, under "video convert" topic if what you are looking for is not addressed, just reply with "hey guys what about going from X codec to Y codec?"If your question pertains to audio conversion, find the most relevant to audio convert or audio codec and address the same way. After all, that is how a forum suppose to function.

[darran 0]

The search feature is a built-in function of IPB.
This is another reason that topic title is very important to this forum. It's all about searching.

If your quest for finding an answer is unsuccessful, all you have to do is post your question in most relevant topic. for example, under "video convert" topic if what you are looking for is not addressed, just reply with "hey guys what about going from X codec to Y codec?"

If your question pertains to audio conversion, find the most relevant to audio convert or audio codec and address the same way. After all, that is how a forum suppose to function.

If it is a built in function of IPB, I guess we can't change it. I am just very particular about posting duplicate messages which is not recommended in ensuring Xisto is kept as neat as possible. I am aware that the search function may not exactly return me the results I want. I guess I can somehow post in an existing thread which is addressing the question in general like you have mentioned.