Effectively searching FC

Using the search tool provided can be a little frustrating but with a little understanding of how things work you should be able to find what your looking for in a matter of minutes using the info provided below.
For this example I am going to use the search term "power supply"
In my first example I search for power supply using the forum defaults and the results are less then stunning. I get a page of about 30 topics that when I click on them doesn't seem to get me anywhere closer to what i was looking for. hmm......
How can we get what we want from this mess????????????
We look at what available to us
What are our options and just how do they effect what I see?
I hope to answer that for those who don't really understand.

First go here FC Search Page and look at the options available to you
They are listed below with an explanation of what they are and do.

Enter your search criteria:
-- Keyword Search Search for the keywords we type using Boolean criteria such as AND, OR, NOT
-- Author Search Search for post by that user containing the keyword provided(Keyword not required)

Select where to search
-- Forums Limits Searches to a specific area of the forum (.eg only get results that occur in the Vaporizer Discussion)
---Vaporizer Discussion
---General Vaporizer Discussion
---Ask the Vaporist
---The Vapor Lounge
Default is all Forums

-- Search In Limits Searches to just messages or topics
---Message text and topic subject
---Message Text Only
---Subject Only
Default is both

Select how to view search results
--Sort by Controls how the results are displayed to you, how they are sorted
---Post Time Orders them by most recent or oldest, dependent upon the sort order
---Author Orders them by author alphabetically, dependent upon the sort order
---Subject Orders them by Topic alphabetically, dependent upon the sort order
---Forum Orders them by Forum alphabetically, dependent upon the sort order

--Sort Order
---Ascending View results A-z/0-9 format(Handy for alphebetical searches)
---Descending view results Z-A/9-0 format(Handy for searching for the most recent)
Default is Order by Post Time in descending format thereby displaying the most recent activity on top


--Show results How you see the results
---Topics Displays the results simply as a list of topics containing keyword/keywords
--Post Displays the results as post Allows you to see the contents of the post and where the keyword was found
Default is Topics
For best results change this to Post

Ok now that you got that, back to my example. When I last left you we discovered a default search of the keywords power supply returned a simple page of like 30 topics. Not much help.
First things first. Lets get something we can use actually read, or do further searching using our browser. Now do the same search only change how the results are displayed to posts. Now we get something a little more manageable and, being that the way the search works, the most relevant searches will be on top. But its still a little bloated 5 pages of results.
Lets limit this down to power supply discussed in the Vaporizer discussion since I am looking for info on my particular model. The Extreme
Still too bloated hmmm....
Now to turn to the power of Boolean and sorting
We need to filter out some of that crap that we are getting back. Tell the forum what we want so it can give us just that.
We know we want power supply but when we search that we get 4 pages of junk, so now what. First let's sort what we get by
setting the search page to search in the "Vaporizer Discussion" Forum (We chose this because this Forum is Vaporizer specific, thus allowing us to see by vaporizer which ones have discussed power supply in their threads) Still a little bit unmanageable because now the results still display in a most recent post format. Lets change it so that it sorts by Subject (The Topic) which will allow us to see at a quick glance alphabetically the vaporizers discussing these keywords. Now we see the Vaporizers listed alphabetically. All we have to do now is look and see if the Extreme is listed. What do you know? There it is and the first listing of it is about a power supply failure.
I'll edit the post and add more about how to use Boolean later today.

I've always had good result just using google with "site:fuckcombustion.com" added as a search parameter. I'm pretty sure all thread are indexed and you can also use google's advanced features.

sticky

thanks for the feedback, henny. I asked ump if he wanted to do this for that very purpose, so I'm glad to see you see it fits that need. We're still tweaking it.

if you want the "master copy" then merge what Skunkypete said into umpnum14's sticky

sounds good fellas...cant wait for people to ask less questions and find what has been said before in this forum.

Google is useful to use as it allows you to use some advanced features that aren't available Nativity within the Flux BB config. So I plan on Covering that too.
But they do have to be indexed and dont always return the most recent results, where as using the search tool provided searches on the LIVE copy of the database thus always assuring you get live results. I hope to have screen shots and all soon, who knows maybe even a video as well.
Just arduous task. Didn't want to bother Tac but knowing the back end info (version of flux, is it mysql) would help me in documenting the advanced operators available to this forum.

Hennessy1414 said:

(...)
sounds good fellas...cant wait for people to ask less questions and find what has been said before in this forum.

Click to expand...

juts wanted to thank umpnum14 and skunkypete for their contributions ..... and also stop by and add my

You know Henn, I've learned something running a french forum ( on a medical related topic) : a person always wants to have his own question answered, thus (IMHO) "existing" on this virtual space through the attention we have for him.
In a sense, it is no use ( and "not nice" in a certain way) to ask him to use the "search tool" to get his answer , even if we do know that this is the 11458th time that this precise question is asked, even if it is the 1st time that it it is asked by this person.


I do not know if I'm clear enough.... It's just a question of empathy and making people feel more comfortable. This has to be done over and over again because there is always new people coming in the circle (which is a good thing).


It is sometimes discouraging to think ..."hell I've already answered this question 9 times this week" but it is part of the "job" if I can put it this way ....the kind of karma for people like us




have a good day everyone...bonne journe tout le monde

I agree with that 100%....thats why they should come to FC chat

should have added that lil tid-bit up there oh well

I agree with you Ben, to an extent. Answering a question is no problem. Even several questions. What we don't want to do here is provide answers to endless questions for people who know little or nothing about vaporizing or the hardware. You end up with many threads where the OP has been spoon fed all the answers to his every question. It encourages more of the same, and eventually the answers tend to go downhill in terms of quality. Just looking around enough to find this thread - http://www.fuckcombustion.com/viewtopic.php?id=530 - gives the newbie vaporist enough info to at least ask intelligent questions.

But for the most part, we don't want to answer a question posted in 'Ask the Vaporists', with just 'search for it'.

Thanks for the sticky Umpnum14 and the good contribution skunkypete. I was hoping u guys could put some more info on using google with "site:fuckcombustion.com" added as a search parameter. I've never heard of doing this before but it would be very helpful for other sites as well as FC.

Check this page for some Google search tips including the site: operator

Search within a specific website (site
Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, the query [ iraq site:nytimes.com ] will return pages about Iraq but only from nytimes.com. The simpler queries [ iraq nytimes.com ] or [ iraq New York Times ] will usually be just as good, though they might return results from other sites that mention the New York Times. You can also specify a whole class of sites, for example [ iraq site:.gov ] will return results only from a .gov domain and [ iraq site:.iq ] will return results only from Iraqi sites.

You can also try this custom Google search engine for FC.

pakalolo said:

OO said:

like if i wanted to learn if it is safe to cook with moldy weed, so i search in the cooking area "mold".
instead i'm given pages on molds for candies and other stuff.

Click to expand...

So use this Google search:

mold -candy site:http://www.fuckcombustion.com

Click to expand...

Hennessy1414 said:

sticky

Click to expand...

FC has evolved into a very valuable resource, think tank and hang out for vaporists...
thanks for creating it.

I tried the Search several times and kept getting nowhere.
While the above Sticky did lead me to the answer to my problems, I thought I'd like to emphasize what the main problem was, for me, and how I solved it. (Actually I think it would be helpful if this part of the solution was bolded or put more up front in the first Post above.)

The key for me is this:
When you do a search, make sure you set the last option at the bottom of the Search page, where it says: "Select How to View Search Results" as POSTS, in the drop down menu:
Show results as
POSTS

Whenever I did a search, I selected which forum, etc. and kept getting only a page long list of threads that was worthless to anyone. The main key for me was the above, and I suspect that is the main problem for most people who have trouble finding what they are looking for.

Moe to be honest I really have no clue why I didn't do that, maybe I was high and forgot.
Anyway thanks post edited