Searches

This is something that's bothered me for a long time. What is the order in which search results are displayed? It looks like there's no particular order. Is there any way that we can have the ability to sort by each of the headings? For example, I want to find a thread where there was some discussion of field-collected plants. When I input certain key words I get almost 200 hits, and the posts are all mixed up. In this case I know the discussion was recent so if I had the ability to sort by date (ascending AND descending) I could probably find it fairly easily.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

I have had a problem with searches too, good question!

I think the searches are arranged in thread # order (which would also loosely translate to chronological/date order of the first post.)

Unfortunately that sort order isn't really helpful to the person searching, nor is it intuitive, since the initial posting date isn't shown.

I've asked Dave in the past about re-sorting the search results: either alphabetically by thread title or reverse-chronological, by the date of the most recent post.

When we last spoke about it, he indicated it wasn't feasible to change at that time.

Hopefully a better solution is possible, but I suspect the DG Marketplace is consuming most of his working hours these days, and as soon as he has some spare time, I'm going to try to nudge him on some long overdue PF changes ;o)

If you can remember who made the post or what forum it was in you can narrow your search results. Even if you can't remember the exact forum, if you can narrow it to one or two it can be a lot quicker to try doing a search in each one of the forums you think it might have been in rather than wading through the results from all the forums. Of course if you have no idea where you saw it, then that's not very helpful but a lot of times based on the topic and knowing which forums you've spent a lot of time following you can narrow it down to a few most likely forums.

Terry - As far as I can tell the results aren't listed by any visible date order. The dates seem to be all over the map.

ecrane - I do know HOW to search, including narrowing searches down by forum, poster, key words, etc. That isn't the problem at all. As stated above, the problem is that because the searches aren't in any order the end result is distinctly unhelpful. In addition, this isn't limited to PlantFiles; it's true of ALL searches: BugFiles, forums, dmails, etc. Another issue is that as far as I know there's no ability to do wild card searches.

These abilities are usually included as part of any basic search, and I'm surprised that a site as large and well-known as DG doesn't have them.

While at it, if there were some way to search "go gardening" and/or "garden watchdog" by the name of the location (i.e. "Dallas, TX") in addition to the zip code, it would be very helpful. i find myself looking for opportunities to pop out to a local nursery for an hour when I'm on business travel and I don't know the zip codes. I often use my cell phone to try and look things up on DG and don't know how to get the zip code easily...I suppose google it first, then remember it and type it later, but it's not a quick process. I wish we had a DG "mobile" for quick research at the nursery too.

(I know, I don't want much, do I?)

Laura

OK - someone changed the search feature! My vote is that I don't like it. I know that it is nice to see the different areas of DG in the search - but I want to find out who exactly suggested that I hang a cast iron cat over my front door and I know the person who posted and the Forum and I want to see a list of the possible threads that have postings by VictorGardner with the words cat and door in them - and I can't do that anymore. :( On the up side the new search tool looks very spiffy. :)

It looks like you're using the "search DG" option from your home page or somewhere else.

If you want to search just the forums, then you'll need to be in a forum, or at least in the forums area to restrict your search ;o)

Guess I wasn't paying attention to how I was searching! (No big surprise here!) Thanks.

When I am searching for a particular phrase or word(s), I click on 'Communities' then use the search at the top where it says search forums. Sometimes we have alot of postings going on in MidSouth and I'm not sure which of the threads says what I'm looking for, so when I click on one of the threads offered, I hit edit on my top tool bar and type in the phrase or word I'm looking for. Hit next, next, until you find it. It keeps me from going thru each post and just takes a minute. I know this doesn't solve the date thing, but usually what I am looking for is in the year we are in and so I avoid the ones that are earlier year postings by scrolling til I get to a recent year. All this takes about a second and is a relief for me, because I can always find what I'm looking for. In my case, even if they were listed in reverse date order, I would still have to go thru each thread, so thank God for the edit feature on my tool bar.

I'm also confused by the "search." I put in "time release insecticide" and got a lot of hits, but when I went to the posts that were listed, and used my browser to search "on this page" for "release" or "insecticide" there were no hits. The posts seemed random - not related to my search.

I entered "time release rose insecticide" and got several hits on posts about brugmansia. What's going on? It seems not to work at all.

Is there a way it shows you where the search phrase is in a post?

TIA
LAS

I have a problem with plant files searches. They are effectively useless unless you know the name of what you are looking for, or whatever it is does not have many variants or varieties.
Example:
I'm trying to ID a bright yellow rose.
The number of roses in plant files is huge but unlessI know the name of the rose you I am looking for there is no way of narrowing the search.
If I search in plant files for "Yellow Rose" it pulls everything with Yellow PLUS everything with Rose in the title. This excludes an awful lot of Yellow Roses and includes a lot of other plants.
I think - after hours of ploughing through ---the rose I was after is 'Gina Lollabrigida', no yellow anywhere near the name here, but I can't be sure unless I can compare all similar roses.

Would it be possible to select more specifically, by colour? or type (eg floribunda, hybrid tea ) or other specific characteristic? either within roses, irises etc or more generally in plant file searches?
A sort by ... option would help a lot.

To search PlantFiles for plants that have certain characteristics, try the Advanced Search. Here's a link, I've already narrowed it down to just roses, to help you get started: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/advanced.php?sname=Roses

You can specify as many (or few) characteristics as you'd like, and then submit the search to see your results.

Thanks Terry that definitely helps, but where is the link to advanced search hiding? I haven't been able to find it.

It's on the main page of the PlantFiles.

Where? I can't see it!! its just the regular search button or the list of specific plant types

It's here (see the print screen shot below.)

Thanks Terry! - I was looking for it at the top with the other search buttons.
Thats so far down the page Its off screen for me. The illustrations, as you page down, are slow to load - so I never see more than the first screen normally.

I seem to remember the advanced search button being at the top of the page several years ago. Has it moved or am I merely suffering from delusions?

thankyou so much for the advanced search info Terry. I don't know why I haven't seen it before. Great help. Thanks again.

Debbie

The way to get to it from the top of the page is to click "search and browse tools" which is in the row of links just underneath the tabs, then in there you'll see the advanced search as well as general and specific search links. So you can either scroll, or you can go through an extra page/click, whatever works best for you!

Thankyou ecrane. I'll give it a try.

Debbie

yep, works great. Thanks again.

This message was edited Jun 13, 2008 5:35 PM