Searching Forums - Need some "How To" Suggestions

Hi,
I know that you need to be pretty specific when searching forums, but I have problems if my search requires more than one word.

For instance: "Agastache from Seed" or "Milkweed in Containers". The search will latch on to one of the words, like "Seed" or "Containers" or even "In" or "Or" and pull up dozens of threads that are useless to me.

Is there a better way to search for a subject with multiple words? Sometimes I'd like see if something has already been discussed, rather than just starting a new thread with a question.

Thanks in advance for any help!

I just flagged your request for our tech to take a look at. We discussed it quite a while ago, but I'm not sure where it's at in the scheme of things regarding future enhancements.

Thanks Terry!
I just thought it was something I wasn't doing correctly. I know it's not a priority since you guys have so many issues to deal with, but, it's actually encouraging to know I'm not the only one dealing with it. It makes me feel a little less dumb :-)

It's a very reasonable suggestion, so hopefully we can implement it without too much hassle.

That would be great.
Maybe if we put the search request between quotes like tags are done on some websites when a tag has multiple words.

I've raised the suggestion and we'll see what the solution is - thanks so much for taking the time to suggest this!

Good Luck! The fact that there are techs that can even figure all this stuff out is totally MAGIC to me.

Me, too!

Well, did the techs come up with a solution to this searching problem yet?

They've had other (proverbial) fish to fry lately but I will keep nudging them :-)

I do not even know where to ask questions anymore. So if anyone sees this and can help me, I would appreciate it.

I used to be able to use Advanced Search and put in a word, a forum and a poster and find the thread I was looking for. It was really a great feature. Now I have no clue where Advanced Search is.

The one line search feature does not seem to work at all. I was thinking since I was looking for a thread where I talked about Dioscorea which probably is not that common a discussion topic, I could use the general search and look thru the threads that came up and pick out the one I wanted.

So I put in the plant, Dioscorea, and up came a long page divided by different features on DG like Garden Watchdog, PlantScout, Garden Bookworm, Trading Lists, Gardenology:, and Botanary. None of which listed the threads on the forums and as far as I looked none even listed Dioscorea so what that page was all about I have no clue. http://davesgarden.com/sitewidesearch.php?q=Dioscorea

So does anyone know where advanced search is these days? I bet it is in plain view and I am just missing it.

Thanks

Kell - If it's from a particular post you wrote, you might be able to locate it by going to your personal Info page. One of the items in the first section on the left of the page should say, "View the posts you have made".

You can scroll through your posts, or just show posts from particular forums. I agree, it's not ideal and it may take you a while, but it's another option.

The search feature definitely needs an upgrade, but because the techs are working on so many different things it may not happen for a while. I'm glad I'm not a computer programmer!

Thanks. I actually found the photo I wanted though not the thread. I remembered someone had emailed me about it and had added a link so I searched my dmails.

So the Advanced Search is no longer? That is too bad. It was great.

I have to say that I have tried to do searches and while they used to be helpful now they just take me to a bunch of places that have nothing to do with my original search. My experience was abt the same as Kell's. I thought I just didn't know what I was doing but now I realize it wasn't me.

I've actually been able to find the Advanced Search, but it didn't seem to work for me.

Go to "Forums" - type something into the "Search Box" and click to open the search. You'll see a link for "Advanced Search", but I haven't had any luck with it. It's possible I don't know how to use it correctly, but I think it probably needs some work.

I guess we'll just have to be patient for a while.

Believe-it-or-not, it's encouraging to know others are having search problems. I've been feeling kind of dumb thinking it was just me.

Well, LOL. There it is. I looked and looked for it yesterday doing the same thing. Could I have just not seen it? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

So it did not work for Dioscorea but I tried brug which I think I must have said 1 million times on DG and only about 10 threads came up but at least some did show.

Thanks

Kell, when I searched for Dioscorea, I returned over 1200 results. Brug returned over 600 results.

But you don't need the advanced search to search for either of those terms, unless you're narrowing your search to a specific forum or poster.

I wanted my own posts. I was looking for something I had posted a few years ago. I got none for Dioscorea and only a few for brug.

Can you send me a link at the help desk of the thread(s) you were looking for?

I had a similar issue recently trying to search the article database for "planting trees." Obviously, both of these words come up in articles quite often, LOL, and I think the search returned all results containing "planting" OR "trees." I seem to remember the search returning results containing both/all search terms at the top of the list of results, but no longer. I tried searching with "planting & trees" and with "planting +trees" -- am I missing some trick that would make this work?

No - I'm not sure we have Boolean search logic in the searches.

Hmm, wonder if that would be relatively easy to incorporate... being able to use boolean logic isn't as nice as a whole nifty new search feature, but it would be much more useful than what we have at present. Just a suggestion for those busy techs!

It's been tried a few times in the past (recent and a long time ago), and apparently it's not quite as easy as it sounds. I'll mention it again, but I'm not sure it's feasible.

To try to keep things organized, let's be sure to use the "contact us" link to let us know if you have any other questions or suggestions, please :-)

sorry, I thought Boolean logic was on-topic for the initial post.

So in search forums I type
Spider mites
I get for my search, these results...
Happy birthday to all born on November 29
An escaped garden plant
On the road across the pond
ID please
Plant propagation
Christmas swap
Ya-ya sisters
Nothing, zero, zip, nada pertaining to "spider mites" not at the top...middle or end...I know...it works perfectly for the admins...its me! It has to be...4 times in a row and more attempts with different unrelated search terms...SAME RESULTS...COMPLETELY UNCHANGED.
Not a single thing that resembles my search words or single word.
I guess I'm just too stupid to use this site any more

Hi FlaFlower,

I am confused. I just hit "Skip to new" at the beginning of this thread, and it takes me to your very message, coming immediately after a Nov 15, 2014 message.

Also, I don't find a place where it says "Search Forums". I did find a place where it said "Search Dave's Garden" and I entered your "spider mites" and apparently nothing happened.

Even if things were working properly, which apparently they are not, entering a search phrase for something like "Spider mites" poses some search questions.

First of all, you really don't want any messages that are talking about spiders (or Spiders, if the searches are case sensitive, which I have no idea whether they are or even should be.)

So you should be able to put quotes around "Spider mites" to find only those places where the two words appear together.

So, when you said "So in search forums I type" did you mean "Search Dave's Garden" or is there an actual place where it says "Search forums" ? And, if so, where?

ZM

FlaFlower, here are a couple of suggestions that might help.

1) Advanced Search - Click on Forums at the top of the page (or first Communities, then Forums from your home page).

You'll see the Search Forums box on the top right, but don't type anything into it. Instead, just click on "Search Forums". It will take you to a page with another "Search Forums" Box, but under that box is a link for "Advanced Search".

By clicking on Advanced Search you can now sort by dates, forums, etc. The threads on the list most likely won't say spider mites, but they will probably have posts that discuss spider mites. It can be kind of labor intensive to read through the threads, but it is one way.

2) Communities Tags - Click on "Communities" on the top of any page. Scroll down to the bottom and click on "Tagged Pages".

You can scroll down the page to look for spider mites, but a faster way is to
type "ctrl F" on your keyboard which will bring up a small text box on your computer (mine is on the bottom left). Type in Spider Mite or Spider Mites (or anything else) and it will highlight everywhere those words are.

Clicking on those tags may bring up posts, pictures, threads or even BugFiles. It's another way to find things that I use frequently. I just tried it and actually came up with more by just typing "Mites". Here's the link to one of the search results:

http://davesgarden.com/tools/tags/tag.php?tag=mites

When using the Community Tags try getting creative by typing in things that might lead you to the subjects your looking for. Remember, the tags might remind someone else how to find something even if they're different tags than you would use.

Hope these ideas help.








This message was edited Dec 20, 2015 10:15 AM