Search enhancement request

Dear Dave,

I have a request for you to consider, if you will be so kind. On several occasions this summer while working out trades with DGers, I wished there was a way to quickly search for specific types of plants within a particular member's list of uploaded photos. For instance, if member XYZ has uploaded 1000 pics of various types of plants, and I want only to find which, if any, standard dwarf bearded irises XYZ has uploaded, it would be ever so helpful to be able to search for just those SDB pics from just member XYZ. Trying to look through pages of 1000 pics over a slow modem connection to seek out potential SDBs is just waaaaaay too time consuming.

Would it be possible, perhaps, to add another option to the Advanced Search function so we could search for specific member's contributions to the PlantFiles, in addition to all of the other search criteria?

Thank you for your consideration,

Laurie

Laurie, that's an interesting idea...I'm not sure exactly how it would work (since you'd run into some confusion over whether you're searching for the member who added the plant, a picture, a comment, etc.)

But one way to do more effective searching - at least while Dave ponders your suggestion - is to use the PF forum to your advantage, and use the forum search box.

1) Specify the cultivar name in quotes. I'll use your "Chocolate Cupcake" as an example. Here are the results from the first pass - searching all forums, all users: http://davesgarden.com/forums/search.php?search_text=%22chocolate+cupcake%22

2) If this list were long (as some will be), I could further narrow it down to the PF pictures forum: http://davesgarden.com/forums/search.php?forum=&search_text=%22chocolate+cupcake%22&limit=pdb&limit_poster=&Search=Search

3) And if that is still too long (and some might be, for the extremely popular varieties), you could narrow it down by user: http://davesgarden.com/forums/search.php?forum=&search_text=%22chocolate+cupcake%22&limit=pdb&limit_poster=laurief&Search=Search

Now, this will work for images submitted since May '02 (I think that's right...) which means the majority of images (almost 82,000 of those in PF) have an accompanying thread. However, about 3,000 images submitted prior to this forum do not.) So chances are good you'll find what you're looking for, but there's always that chance you may miss one - something to be aware of ;o)

Yes, Terry, I know I could search for specific cultivars that way, but that's not what I'm trying to do in my trading scenario. If I'm interested, for instance, in trading only for SDBs with a particular member who I know has uploaded a bunch of SDB pics (along with maybe hundreds of pics of other types of plants in which I am not interested), I want to be able to find all the SDB pics she has uploaded even if I don't know their cultivar names (and hopefully without having to waste countless hours scrolling through the other hundreds of pics she has uploaded of other types of plants).

Would there be some way to include a member name search criteria limited to photo uploads to the Advanced Search function?

Laurie

Yep - instead of searching by cultivar name, search for "Standard Dwarf Bearded" (or whatever type of iris), then narrow it down to forum and user. Try it and see if that works for your purposes.

That's a great suggestion ... in theory. I tried it, and it *almost* works. However, when I search for Standard Dwarf Bearded in the PF Pictures Forum under a specific member's name, it returns ALL entries that include ANY of the three words (Standard, Dwarf, Bearded) in my search phrase. That means I still have to muddle through hundreds of pics of bearded irises other than the SDBs I'm looking for. I tried using Standard AND Dwarf as my search phrase, but it's still returning all entries with *either* the word Standard or Dwarf. Is there a way to force the search engine to search the phrase and not each word individually?

Try putting quotes around the entire phrase "Standard Dwarf Bearded"

Never mind. I got it. Instead of trying to use AND as a qualifier, I just put quotation marks around "Standard Dwarf Bearded", and it searched the whole phrase rather than each word individually.

Thanks! That takes care of my application. Sure wish I'd known how to do that when I was setting up trades this summer!

Laurie

I would suggest that it'd still be nice to be able to accomplish this same search through the PF search engine itself so that the photo thumbnails would be returned with the search results.

Laurie