Member Avatar for Ezzaral

Has advanced search simply moved or gone away entirely? It looks like search has changed a bit and I can't seem to get to the advanced search screen.

  • 5 Contributors
  • 8 Replies
  • 192 Views
  • 1 Day Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by Dani
Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

You're right -- clicking the Search button just brings up some crazy useless window.

Member Avatar for Dani

We have been having a lot of problems with our search feature for quite awhile. It often returns unrelevant results, and for most queries, returns nothing. Additionally, half the features on the Advanced Search page didn't work at all. We just switched back (for the second time) to using Google search results. You can still access the advanced search page by going to www.daniweb.com/forums/search.php ... However, I don't want to formally link to that page because most of the filters on it are broken and the results are poor. Plus, because we were hit by Google Panda's algorithm yet again, we had to cancel two servers last night, leaving us fewer resources for our search server.

Member Avatar for Netcode

pretty bad:(

Member Avatar for Dani

I just want to mention that since we are now using Google's Search, google functionality applies. Therefore, you can use the site: definition if you want to limit search results to a certain section of the site.

For example, to search for "round robin algorithm" just in the C++ forum, do this:

site:daniweb.com/software-development/cpp round robin algorithm

To search for php code snippets involving "sessions", do this:

site:daniweb.com/web-development/php/code sessions

You can also use the wildcard. For example, to search ALL of the Hardware and Software section for news stories related to "viruses", do this:

site:daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/*/news viruses

You can use the wildcard character at the beginning of the URL string to search for all news stories about "google" in any section of the site, like this:

site:*/news google

It doesn't matter whether you put the site: definition before or after the keyword query. Unfortunately it does take familiarity with our site's URL structure.

Not only do we have the benefit of Google's algorithm, which of course makes relevance top priority, but it has also been tweaked to put a stronger emphasis on more recent results, since we don't want to resurrect old threads if we don't have to. Hopefully it is the best of both worlds.

Edited by Dani because: n/a
Member Avatar for Dani

That just gave me an idea. I can code an Advanced Search page that basically puts a nice GUI on top of those queries, so you don't need to know our URL structure.

Member Avatar for ~s.o.s~

To add to the above posts, make sure you quote your keywords if you are looking for an exact match. For e.g. if you are looking for sessions word in PHP code snippets, your query should be: site:daniweb.com/web-development/php/code "sessions". Without quoting session, you'll get code snippets containing both the words, session and sessions.

Member Avatar for Dani

I actually just went ahead and implemented the advanced search page. No longer need to do this manually. :)

Also, the results page now has a link to take you back to the advanced search page with the criteria you currently have selected, so you can refine your search.

Unfortunately, it took me the last hour and a half to code this, and I have a conference to get to in the morning in the city.

Member Avatar for Dani

Oh, and you can still use quotes for an exact match. But no longer do you need to play around with the whole site: thing ;)

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.