A Suggesting about Search

[Hear Here]

I'm having difficulties with the Search facility on this site. I see no way to specify "Exact Match" where I could look for matches to for example "Aurender A30". If I try this phrase, I get matches to all mentions of Aurender and all mentions of A30. If I simply enter A30, I'm told this is too short an expression for it to be bothered to search!

Could the Search facility be improved to offer more options? It would possibly be helpful to be able to search in a specified forum, for example Digital Audio.

Thanks. Peter

 

[Steve Williams]

if you use the advanced search option and then click "search forums"you can search a specified forum

 

[Steve Williams]

 

[Hear Here]

View attachment 65893

Thanks Steve.

View attachment 65893

if you use the advanced search option and then click "search forums"you can search a specified forum

if you use the advanced search option and then click "search forums"you can search a specified forum

Thanks Steve. I think you meant to say "click Search Threads" to open up the list of forums. That seems to work OK.

I still have problems with searches such as "Aurender A30", "Accuphase A36", or "Avantgarde Duo".

I get lots od results for Aurender or Accuphase or Avantgarde but these include every mention of the brand name with no narrowing down to the model wanted. Ploughing through the Aurender results I've not yet found a single mention of the A30.

Worse still, a search for "NAD M12" draws a complete black as the strings of characters are apparently not long enough.

Any suggestions? Thanks. Peter

 

[Steve Williams]

I still have problems with searches such as "Aurender A30", "Accuphase A36", or "Avantgarde Duo

when you search those items add a comma followed by what the component is such as "speakers", preamp etc

 

[Hear Here]

Unfortunately your suggestion doesn't reduce results to the model specified. If I want results of say Accuphase A36, how can I get only these and not all the other Accuphase amps that are shown even with the comma trick? Thanks Peter

PS I think this is not possible at present, so that's why I added this to the Suggestions forum.

 

[Steve Williams]

we are not able to modify the search engine app as best I know

 

[microstrip]

we are not able to modify the search engine app as best I know

The site search engine is very limited in some aspects and only returns a small number of the matches I can get using advanced google inside the site.

Most of time I get the answer "The search could not be completed because the search keywords were too short, too long, or too common." Try searching Lamm ML3 in WBF using its search engine ...

 

[Steve Williams]

when we switched to the Xenforo platform we did in fact purchase an add on for doing advanced searches but we could never get it operational

 

[musicfirst1]

when we switched to the Xenforo platform we did in fact purchase an add on for doing advanced searches but we could never get it operational

My personal wish list would include the functionality to search MSB, APL , USB or other three letter acronyms for sure Steve

 

[Steve Williams]

I am hoping Julian will post a comment here.

His suggestion is to search using Google. Insert the key words and add a comma followed by whatsbestforum

i agree we should be able to drill down to 3 letters. The advanced search add on we bought did in fact do that however in order to use the app we discovered it only functions when using a dedicated server We use a shared server to mitigate the cost.

 

[microstrip]

I am hoping Julian will post a comment here.

His suggestion is to search using Google. Insert the key words and add a comma followed by whatsbestforum

i agree we should be able to drill down to 3 letters. The advanced search add on we bought did in fact do that however in order to use the app we discovered it only functions when using a dedicated server We use a shared server to mitigate the cost.

I prefer using "ml3" site:whatsbestforum.com in the google line. Or even specifying the thread:
"a30" site: www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/a-suggesting-about-search.30783/

 

[Legolas]

Hi Guys
We have advanced search facility bought when we set up Xenforo originally. However to make it work we have to move to another web server host and much more expensive dedicated service. We are currently on a shared resource host, and that is limiting the site wide less than 4 character searches.

I will ask the question again today to our web hosting service, check if that has changed. It would be useful to have this facility, I agree.
Kind regards
Julian

 

[Hear Here]

Hi Guys
We have advanced search facility bought when we set up Xenforo originally. However to make it work we have to move to another web server host and much more expensive dedicated service. We are currently on a shared resource host, and that is limiting the site wide less than 4 character searches.

I will ask the question again today to our web hosting service, check if that has changed. It would be useful to have this facility, I agree.
Kind regards
Julian

Hi Julian

Certainly a 3 character Search would be an improvement, as often it's impossible to think of a valid 4+ character search - for example we can't search "NAD M33".

Better though would be able to specify "Exact Match" in which case "NAD M33" would be considered as a 7 character string, rendering the existing 3 character rule to be no problem. Also this would allow sensible results to a "Accuphase A36" search. At present every mention of Accuphase is offered. Thanks anyway. Peter

 

[Steve Williams]

Hi Julian

Certainly a 3 character Search would be an improvement, as often it's impossible to think of a valid 4+ character search - for example we can't search "NAD M33".

Better though would be able to specify "Exact Match" in which case "NAD M33" would be considered as a 7 character string, rendering the existing 3 character rule to be no problem. Also this would allow sensible results to a "Accuphase A36" search. At present every mention of Accuphase is offered. Thanks anyway. Peter

at the present time in order to use the advanced search add on we bought we would need to go to a dedicated or private server nd the monthly cost on that is beyond our means
However yesterday I did have a long talk with our tech support. They understand what and why we need to drill down to words with 3 characters or less and are looking fora work around to help us achieve that. So hopefully they will come up with some idea to help but again no guaranty

 

[musicfirst1]

Any update on this topic Steve?

 

[Steve Williams]

We are still working on it as we speak. It’s not as easy as we hoped. So far our only recourse is to update to current Xenforo version and elastisearch will work. to do that we either have to close the site to do this or create a mirror site in the background and do the work there. Our concern is we have to verify that all of our forum add ons are stable with the new build and that is always a crap shoot. Our other hope is to use version 6 of elastisearch rather than version 7 which we have and requires Xenforo update the problem is locating an earlier version which we were working on this afternoon

 

[tima]

We are still working on it as we speak.

Steve - We appreciate your continuous efforts to keep WBF the best audio forum bar none.

 

[dminches]

Is there any way to search within a thread, not just a forum? Some of these threads are long and have a lot of information, but if you are limited to searching the entire forum you end up with a lot of unneeded hits.

 

[Steve Williams]

Hi David
we have been trying daily to find a simple way to be able to use elastisearch without having to update Xenforo and run the risk that all of our add ins will crash plus the time we would have to close the forum to bring everything active

I assure you this is number one on our list. I’m hoping to find resolution at some point