Searching our forums
Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:16 am
I have made some major changes that will allow you to search our various forums in great detail -- more later in this post.
I should mention that the search feature is only available when you are logged in. If you have not registered, the process is simple and free: http://eagles-international.net/forums/ ... 11205a448e. You do not need to own an Eagle to be a member of the forum. Our forum is open to the public.
Now back to the changes in the search feature. Many times, in the past, when you searched you got a message that said the terms you used were "too common" and the search did not take place. I have now changed the settings and re-indexed the database so that there is nothing to inhibit your searching. That is the good news. The bad news is that you will now likely get a ton of hits that you will need to sort through. Unfortunately our software (phpbb) indexes on words and not phrases, so the search finds any post with the words (anywhere in the post) you are searching on.
There is an option: use the Google search option on the search page. I added that feature a couple of years back and it was a miserable failure. It failed because our forum did not have a huge database that would attract Google to "index" our site. To fix that problem, I installed some software that feeds Google an index of our database. As a result, the Google search option within our forum search feature works pretty well now and it will let you sort on keywords or phrases.
So that there is no confusion, when you click on the search button at the top of the page, you will go to a page within our forum that includes two options. The first one listed is a Google search of our data. The second search method listed is a phpbb software based search that now works much better.
Jim
I should mention that the search feature is only available when you are logged in. If you have not registered, the process is simple and free: http://eagles-international.net/forums/ ... 11205a448e. You do not need to own an Eagle to be a member of the forum. Our forum is open to the public.
Now back to the changes in the search feature. Many times, in the past, when you searched you got a message that said the terms you used were "too common" and the search did not take place. I have now changed the settings and re-indexed the database so that there is nothing to inhibit your searching. That is the good news. The bad news is that you will now likely get a ton of hits that you will need to sort through. Unfortunately our software (phpbb) indexes on words and not phrases, so the search finds any post with the words (anywhere in the post) you are searching on.
There is an option: use the Google search option on the search page. I added that feature a couple of years back and it was a miserable failure. It failed because our forum did not have a huge database that would attract Google to "index" our site. To fix that problem, I installed some software that feeds Google an index of our database. As a result, the Google search option within our forum search feature works pretty well now and it will let you sort on keywords or phrases.
So that there is no confusion, when you click on the search button at the top of the page, you will go to a page within our forum that includes two options. The first one listed is a Google search of our data. The second search method listed is a phpbb software based search that now works much better.
Jim