Why not in this forum??

[Timothy B.]

Since the new NCRS forum software is obviously similar (or even the same) as the software used by the Corvette Forum (CF) and the Corvette Action Center (CAC), I thought I would try how their searches compared to here. Even with the same software, their searching seems more capable.

I found that on the CF, you CAN search for three and even two letter words without any problem. In that forum, when you want to make sure any particular word IS in the search, you just put a "+" sign in front of the word. For example, "+warm +up" works just fine to require both "warm" and "up" to be in the results. The CF has been around a while and is fairly popular with lots of threads and postings, so I am not sure the "server load" reasoning makes sense.

At the CAC, it seems that two letter words aren't allowed (but it doesn't give you an error, it just ignores that part of your search), but three letter words are OK. For CAC, you use the word "and" in-between words to make sure they are all present.

For some reason, I am finding the search function here quite a bit more limiting. I am open to input from those who have figured out how to make searches return the content they are looking for, but as of yet I haven't hit on the secret.

[Dick W.]

Re: Why not in this forum??

As I posted earlier use * to make your word longer. I believe that this is also in the FAQ's

[Timothy B.]

Re: Why not in this forum??

Yes, I have seen those posts and I have read the FAQs and try as I might I can't seem to get it work work as you say it should. Please tell me what specifically I should type in the advanced search field to yield results with the word "warm" and the word "up" both in the results? I really am trying, and I work with computers everyday...

[Rob M.]

Re: Why not in this forum??

I am with Tim - the search function is limited here compared to CF. I have tried the * thing with limited success. If we are patient and give this new forum SW some tire here, we might see better archive search in the future. I am hopeful

[Timothy B.]

Re: Why not in this forum??

Yep, that is a good point Rob. With any new software package comes a new learning curve - both for the users and the administrators too. Hopefully the best features of all similar sites can eventually be brought into this forum too.

[Jean C.]

Re: Why not in this forum??

Tim, I think that if you type "warm*up" (note use of quotation marks + the *) you will get the result you want. I had the same problem when searching for TI Ignition and John referred me to the FAQ tab for an explanation.
Cheers,
Charlie

[John W.]

Re: Why not in this forum??

Rob Musquetier told me earlier that you can use the % to be a wild card for one letter. The * will return anything between what you enter and what you want. For instance "warm%up" would return what you want. "warm*up" Might return "warm and this and that and then up".

One disadvantage we have over the other forums mentioned is that we are dealing with the vast majority of our messages having been imported. Importing a huge group of what is called flat file database messages into a relational database is an inexact science. I am very pleased with the results considering what had to take place to get them here at all. I found a script that was written to do the conversion and Rob did a couple of tweaks to fine tune it.

When I have time I will be researching the search issue with about 100 others. First I have to delete about 30,000 messages to go back and pick up about that many that I missed when doing the conversion. So one of these days before long you come back and see that the Archive Forum has gone from 278,000+ messages down to 250,000 don't panic. It will grow back to the 300,000 number after that.

I just pray that it doesn't break anything.

[Timothy B.]

Re: Why not in this forum??

Thanks John for the reply, that explanation is actually starting to make sense to me. I didn't realize the problem you had importing the old data. I deal with large databases at work and I recognize how difficult that can be to convert from one to another.

Charlie: I had tried what you suggested also to no avail. I think it does work if you use the "%" without quotes. We will eventually get it figured out! :-)