EEVblog Electronics Community Forum

The Topic formerly known as:  NEWBIES, YOU'RE SCREWED (AKA, Forum Search doesn't work half the time)
(revised Jan2/2014)


Recently Dave wrote:

"It is quite likely that your question has already been answered in some form, or your product already discussed extensively, so please use the Search facility located in the menu system above as a first pass. Don't use the search box top right, it's not as good."

This is good advice, and sometimes helpful.  But while it's perfectly true that this forum holds a vast wealth of information and knowledge, locating it is not as simple as one might hope.  Here's a simple example, triggered by a recent newbie request:

   Using the "good" Search function in the top menu, look for "DS1000Z firmware".

You'll get a number of hits (10, in this case).  What you won't get is a link to:

   https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/sniffing-the-rigol%27s-internal-i2c-bus/msg345866/#msg345866

which contains both of the search terms explicitly, and is the only one providing a download link.  For unknown reasons, the system won't show you that one.     This is just one example I had at hand, but it happens fairly frequently.  You just won't realize it unless you already know the post you're looking for, and notice a search isn't including it.

IMO, this is a contributing factor to why we persistently see so many requests (by newbies and otherwise).  Even if they do perform a Search, they're still missing out on vital info that non-newbies have seen and processed.  Hell, I have trouble often myself, finding my own posts.   

There are many truly excellent things about this Forum  , but unfortunately Search is not one of them.   

I agree that the se4arch function in SMF leaves something to be desired.

Try using a google search specifying the site eevblog.com e.g

DS1000Z firmware site: eevblog.com

Not the perfect solution but certainly a work around.

EDIT: I take that back, the above google search only returns 3 hits for this forum.

Search works fine and returns the one you wanted (18th item)  you just need to set "match any words" instead of the default "match all words".

Maybe the default can be changed to "match any words" by the moderators of Dave.

Search works fine and returns the one you wanted (18th item)  you just need to set "match any words" instead of the default "match all words".

Rob, thanks for the tip.  But I wonder how you can say it "works fine", when all words are present and it doesn't match on that post?  With all due respect, that's not "working fine" in my book.

While your tip may be helpful, it will also often result in an explosion of hits, from unrelated topics and posts.  Which you then have to dig through manually.  For some reason, I thought that was supposed to be the computer's job?

It might be the search method that's set up. I had a problem with that on my forum and fixed it by going to a full text index. The Admin here could look into it.

Done.

These are the other options, and the default values set:
Relative search weight for number of matching messages within a topic:  30%
Help Relative search weight for age of last matching message:  25%
Help Relative search weight for topic length:  20%
Help Relative search weight for a matching subject:  15%
Help Relative search weight for a first message match:  10%
Help Relative search weight for a sticky topic:  0% Total

I've added a mod that adds a search button to boards and also topic threads.

I'd like to install this, but it's not compatible with this version of the forum
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=887

This problem is especially frustrating for long discussions.

...

I raised this issue in the General Chat area a couple of days ago and got one reply, suggesting to use Google search.  Yeah, right.  Google does not help at all when you're trying to find references within a long discussion subject.

Well, it works for me. I sometimes try to find a reference in the Flir E4 teardown thread (2625 posts as of now), and unfortunately the forum search function doesn't work all that well. However google search for site:eevblog.com/forum Flir E4 <whatever_im_looking_for> works quite well.

Since google seem to do a good job as second search engine, maybe the search textbox at the top right can be replaced with a google search texbox (limited to this forum)

Yes, I'd love to know how to do this, anyone?

As example this website is using google seacrh engine at the top:
http://www.spray.com/

It was added to this UK forum last year: http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/index.php - the discussion about it is here: http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=82628 - and it does work very well indeed. Looking at the source code of the form, it looks to be very straightforward.

This is for vBulletin though, not SMF as used here.
There is a mod for SMF google searches but it's not for the latest version so is has to be patched in manually.

Quote from: Mark Hennessy on December 29, 2013, 01:08:56 pm

It was added to this UK forum last year: http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/index.php - the discussion about it is here: http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=82628 - and it does work very well indeed. Looking at the source code of the form, it looks to be very straightforward.

This is for vBulletin though, not SMF as used here.
There is a mod for SMF google searches but it's not for the latest version so is has to be patched in manually.

Are you sure? As far as I can understand - and from how it's explained on that thread I linked to - it's simply using Google Custom Search.

Here is the source code, which I think has been manually added to the header source code.
<form id="cse-search-box" action="http://www.google.com/cse">
  <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="008872823631354711830:4sch4flwhxq" />
  <input type="hidden" name="ie" value="UTF-8" />
  <input type="text" name="q" id="q" /><br />
  <input type="submit" name="s" id="s" value="Search this website" />
</form>

As you can see, it's a bog-standard HTML form that sends the query to google.com - I assume it's the "cx" value that identifies that site to Google Custom Search?

I raised this issue in the General Chat area a couple of days ago and got one reply, suggesting to use Google search.  Yeah, right.

Yes, right. I gave that suggestion. And if you don't manage to type in a simple google search then, well ... Have you considered a non-electronics hobby?