Failed again at searching this site

[Tortoise]

Hmm. Sometimes searches are easy, sometimes frustratingly ineffective - I know it's me not the site

Current problem - I know there's a thread discussing people's first aid kits recently, but i've tried searching every way i can think of, with basic and advanced, using +first +aid (with and without +kit), then just with 'aid' or just with 'first' (not using apostrophes), in every forum except the obviously not ones like 'gallery', in subject and message text, using " " and not using them etc etc etc.

Tried searching for other things in case - no problems with 'Frenchmans' etc etc.

What am I doing wrong, and can anyone please direct me to the thread i'm after?

Thanks a bunch.

[wayno]

i'd expect you should get a result on at least one of those options. i dont get any results either...

[tastrax]

the one word firstaid seems to bring up quite a few responses

search.php?keywords=%22firstaid%22

[wayno]

is this what you were looking for? i had to google it to find this thread

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=489

[Tortoise]

Thanks Tastrax. Didn't think of that! And thanks for checking it out too Wayno.

But no, it's not the thread i was after - but it's very helpful anyway. Trying to get my first aid kit under 700 gm

I think maybe the recent thread i'm thinking of was a slight side track to the original post - but the message text should bring it up. Not there with firstaid either.

Just realised it might be 1st aid! So i'll check that too.

Cheers

[wayno]

how about this thread? http://tasmania.bushwalk.com/forum/view ... 0&p=167707

[matagi]

This thread?

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=12700

EDIT: Oops looks like Wayno beat me to it.

[Tortoise]

Thanks, guys! That's it.

If anyone can figure why it didn't appear in the searches, i'd still be interested for future reference.

[matagi]

I found it because I knew I had posted in it so I just searched for my posts.

However, I also tried searching "First Aid Kits" which is the title of the thread and I got nothing - even using advanced search. I thought it might be a forum setting that doesn't recognise words of 4 letters or less, but then I tried searching for "game" and got the "Game: where is it?" thread, so that throws that theory out the window.

[Tortoise]

'First" doesn't work either

At least this is all making me feel a little less inept!

I feel for new members who get hammered for not searching before they post. I've often searched in the past and didn't get anything - even though stuff was there. I thought it was just me, but not always, apparently.

[corvus]

G'day Tortoise,
Do not despair I did the original post and had trouble searching for it
Try
First Aid Kits
It worked for me
corvus

[Son of a Beach]

As others have said, Google is better at searching a site than most sites' own search systems. I've certainly found that to be true for the rather large web site for my full time employer. It is also likely to be true for this site. Google will allow you to specify that you only want to find results for a particular site which makes it very easy to use.

As for the results on this site's search system...

I've not idea why it is sometimes so finicky. Google does a very good job of guessing what we really meant by our search terms, but most other systems (such as the freeware system on this site) take your search terms completely literally and very precisely. We get used to the Google way and then get let down by other systems.

For example, if you search for:

first aid kit

You will not find anything. However, if you search for:

first aid kits

you will get plenty of results. That extra "s" at the end makes all the difference in this case.

Similarly, a lot of relevant topics use "1st" instead of "first". So that's another variation worth trying.

Having said that, it appears (from testing just now) that the default search uses only the post content and NOT the post title. When searching for "First Aid Kits" I found a topic called "First Aid Kit" (without the "s") but that was not found when searching for "First Aid Kit". But in looking at that topic, that phrase is not found anywhere in the content - only in the title.

Actually, when going to the "Advanced Search" and searching in topic titles only, it still doesn't find it. I'm guessing that by default it should be searching the topic titles even in the simple search, and that there is some bug in the current version of phpBB that is causing searching of topic titles to fail.

I'll notify the rest of the team of this issue, and perhaps we can log a support request with the phpBB people.

PS. That doesn't explain why searching for "aid" brings up nothing though. I'll add this to the team discussion.

[Tortoise]

Well, thanks heaps for all that. I haven't thought of googling instead of searching here, but I'll remember that now.

I don't remember specific examples, but i know sometimes new members get a bit of a hammering for not searching before they post a new topic. Here's an example where they might well not have found what other members already know is there.