Martin Wynne
Admin
- Location
- West of the Severn UK
- Info
.
I have added yet another Search option, making now 4 different ways of searching Templot Club. The new one is called Exact search, and can be found on the lower navigation bar:
This one will search the topics only, not other sections of Templot Club, or the Companion pages.
Remember to choose whether you want to search the topic titles or the full topic text.
"Exact search" means what it says, you can enter the exact text that was posted including punctuation marks, etc., like this:
and it finds the post in which I wrote that, and the two places where it was quoted by others.
Exact searching makes it much easier to find hyphenated words, technical terms, numeric data, file names, etc:
Another big advantage of this option is that it will search for 2 and 3-letter words and abbreviations, such as P4 or LMS:
However, it is not restricted to whole words, so searching for EM also finds "email", "remain" , etc. Which is not very helpful.
To summarise the other search options:
Full site search: searches the entire Templot web site, including the Companion and the archived old forum in addition to Templot Club. It may not always be fully up-to-date because it relies on me to run the indexing script and post the results. Allow 3-letter words: Yes.
Search database: this is the native XenForo search function for Templot Club. It includes numerous options and filters, especially if you click the Advanced option. It's very useful apart from one infuriating restriction -- Allow 3-letter words: No. It won't search for anything shorter than 4 letters. Which means you can't search for GWR or P4. This is a well-known restriction on the MySQL database engine. There is a quite complex process available to change the limit, but it risks degrading the performance of the database so best left alone.
Search by tag: this does allow 3-letter words and could be very useful IF folks remembered to add meaningful tags to their topics. Not many do, including me, or remember to go back and edit them as a topic develops. Allow 3-letter words: Yes.
Exact search: as explained above. Allow 3-letter words: Yes.
Finally of course there is a 5th option, which sometimes gets the best results -- search Templot Club using Google. Allow 3-letter words: Yes. You need to add this exact string to the search terms to restrict the Google search to the Templot web site and Templot Club:
edit: and now a 6th option, the FreeFind plug-in. See below.
cheers,
Martin.
I have added yet another Search option, making now 4 different ways of searching Templot Club. The new one is called Exact search, and can be found on the lower navigation bar:
This one will search the topics only, not other sections of Templot Club, or the Companion pages.
Remember to choose whether you want to search the topic titles or the full topic text.
"Exact search" means what it says, you can enter the exact text that was posted including punctuation marks, etc., like this:
and it finds the post in which I wrote that, and the two places where it was quoted by others.
Exact searching makes it much easier to find hyphenated words, technical terms, numeric data, file names, etc:
nickel-silver , 00-SF , flat-bottom , 16.5mm , check_rails.png , 1/8" , B-7.5 , 0-MF , loose-heel , 1:32
Another big advantage of this option is that it will search for 2 and 3-letter words and abbreviations, such as P4 or LMS:
However, it is not restricted to whole words, so searching for EM also finds "email", "remain" , etc. Which is not very helpful.
To summarise the other search options:
Full site search: searches the entire Templot web site, including the Companion and the archived old forum in addition to Templot Club. It may not always be fully up-to-date because it relies on me to run the indexing script and post the results. Allow 3-letter words: Yes.
Search database: this is the native XenForo search function for Templot Club. It includes numerous options and filters, especially if you click the Advanced option. It's very useful apart from one infuriating restriction -- Allow 3-letter words: No. It won't search for anything shorter than 4 letters. Which means you can't search for GWR or P4. This is a well-known restriction on the MySQL database engine. There is a quite complex process available to change the limit, but it risks degrading the performance of the database so best left alone.
Search by tag: this does allow 3-letter words and could be very useful IF folks remembered to add meaningful tags to their topics. Not many do, including me, or remember to go back and edit them as a topic develops. Allow 3-letter words: Yes.
Exact search: as explained above. Allow 3-letter words: Yes.
Finally of course there is a 5th option, which sometimes gets the best results -- search Templot Club using Google. Allow 3-letter words: Yes. You need to add this exact string to the search terms to restrict the Google search to the Templot web site and Templot Club:
Code:
+site:85a.uk/templot/
edit: and now a 6th option, the FreeFind plug-in. See below.
cheers,
Martin.
message ref: 3664