One more search functionality question

[alex_read]

My situation: The other day I found a post which was amazingly useful & informative. At the time I did rate the post & give comments to that user but I sadly didn't subscribe to the thread & had some real trouble trying to find it again.

The post & thread in question was this: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...pers-or-levers, post #9 by szlamany. I remembered certain terms such as "full stack developer" and "own I/O", and though I couldn't remember exactly, I narrowed down that the post could have been made by one of 3 people (I thought si_the_geek, szlamany or dilettante).

My attempts: I tried searching with the AND keyword, single & double quotes, searching for posts only & popping in each username in turn (both into the username field or the advanced search keywords top field). I tried searching both this site and google for terms such as site:vbforums.com "full stack developer" AND "I/O" AND szlamany.

I went through the notifications, my profile and settings views in the menubar in an attempt to trace my last-given rating or comments too. Lastly, I googled vbulletin search behaviour options & read a few of their forum posts also.

All in all, I've just spent around 3h to find this same post.

My question: To prevent the same situation, how am I (or how is any forum user) in a similar situation, meant to properly use the site's search please. How would you tackle this and how is vbulletin search to be used if you had this scenario & wanted to find that same post in minutes? Thanks

[brad jones]

The vBulletin search is good if you are looking for a single word. When you start doing boolean searches (multiple words), it gets bogged really fast. There are two comments I'll make that might help in the future.

First - if you know the person you were trying to find, then you can find that person's latest post by finding any post by that person. Simply search for their ID or look for them in the member list. If you click on their name on the left, a menu will pop-up with one of the options being to view their latest posts:



Second -
If you find the vBulletin search isn't working, then jump over to Google. Do the search with Google and add "site:VBForums.com" to the search. Google with then only search the site you list after the "site:" prompt. For example, you search on Google would have been:

full stack developer site:VBForums.com

If these don't answer your question, let me know. I'll need to look to see if the My Activity tab in the My Profile dialog shows latest ratings. The information might also be there if it was really recent.

[techgnome]

The vBulletin search is good if you are looking for a single word. When you start doing boolean searches (multiple words), it gets bogged really fast.

That's good to know and explains why the searches I've done don't really help. Rarely do I have single word searches... mostly because any one word I'd use would be too vague. So this is good to know. Sounds like it would work best if I'm looking for a single, unique or rare word.

On a related note - is there an extension that would allow the bookmarking of "favorite" threads/posts? I've got a few that I use often - mostly into the FAQ/Help sections, it would be handy if there was a way to click a link and have the thread added to a list of favorites... which could then be accessed via the user's panel... just a thought. don't know if one exists or if it's possible.

If I was motivated enough I'd build it and donate it... funny how my development motivation tends to disappear after dealing with clients all day.

-tg

[Steve R Jones]

ummmmm. There's no need to reinvent the wheel when your browser(s) have bookmarking capabilities

I've been known to create folders per site to store links to threads I want to reference again.

[techgnome]

That's what I have been doing... when I think about it... :P

-tg

[alex_read]

Thanks for the speedy reply/replies all!

@Brad: Hmm, I knew about the "view forum posts" - those 3x users have thousands & the post I was looking at was quite an old, non-recent one. On my Google search, the post didn't appear, on yours, the search terms, the post might likely show, but isn't in the top 4 pages of hits as "stack" brings up "stack vs heap" & all sorts of other unrelated topics too.

@Techgnome: I noticed AND was a keyword! I was viewing posts where AND was highlighted and was the only word of the whole search term which was found. Aparently there's a vbulletin setting which controls whether it's picked up this way or included as a Boolean/conditional term but as I read on the vbulletin own forums & as Brad has highlighted here, this setting has its drawbacks if switched on.

Ok well I guess I've got my answer - I'll need to be more careful in future. I'll just try to use the subscribe to this thread button at any post I might want to come back to or use the browser favourites. Maybe this feedback to improve the search capabilities could be forwarded to the vbulletin staff though if others in future get the same troubles - it's not super friendly & if Google ever splits, gets sued for privacy, goes offline in the distant future, it's going to be even tricker to search.

@Steve: On a closing note, I found after having spent those 3h... I *had* saved that post into my browser favourites too!!! :'c(

[Shaggy Hiker]

Yeah, I have that problem, as well. Does anybody have a tool that helps you remember what you've already saved a link to?