I try the "simple" mode and select "this forum only" and get posts from all forums.

I go to the detailed search form and click on exactly the forum I want to search - but get all forums.

If this has been asked before, don't blame me, I couldn't find it in the search!

no one knows? no one cares? obviously KCat is an idiot and doing something wrong? 44 views and no one has any thoughts at all?



I'm gonna go eat some woims.

I obviously have no technical advice as I don't know how the forum software operates. However, I just did a search in this forum only and got results from this forum only. I used a rather general term that would pop up in many different areas. When I deselected the this forum only box, I got results from all over. I then did a detailed search with the same term indicating which forum to search and got results from that forum, not all the others.

Could there be something up with your software settings?

I hate it when somebody does this to me...

I did three tests -
1) Looked for ebonite in the Parker forum, only got answers in the Parker forum.
2) Looked for coprolite in the Paper and Pen Paraphernalia forum, got 0 results
3) Looked for coprolite in All Forums, got 1 result.

So, for me, now, at 0950 AEST on Friday 23 May, using Firefox on Mac OS X 10.4, it works.

Are you still having problems?
What browser are you using?
Have you cleaned out the cache, cookies, etc?
Have you turned three times widdershins and sacrificed a chicken (get a young one, you can roast it later...)?

I've seen this happen every now and again, and it can be irritating.

it's been working today

Ahhhh, so yesterday you were an idiot, today you're fine....

Ducking....

Regards,

Gerry

This is not a criticism of the admins but of the developers. I've written this sort of search before and I could do a better job of building a search in about a day. Searching is most certainly the weak link in IP.Board.

However, IP.Board seems to do a great job of search optimization, as when I search in another search engine I can usually find FPN posts really easily. Sadly, that doesn't help with subforum-specific searches.

When you want to search this forum, use Google Advanced Search, rather than FPN's own search feature. You can restrict your search to FPN (or any other web site) if you use Advanced Search. Google produces much better results. I haven't used the FPN search feature for quite some time.

One more thing, if you include the name of the subforum in quotes (for example, "the parker forum") in your Google Advanced Search, Google seems to do a good job pulling up results from that subforum.

(edited by RayMan in order to add the second paragraph)

OK I give. I am IT challenged. How do you use the google adv search to find things inside FPN?

Go to the Google homepage, and in the box type:

Nakaya Piccolo site:www.fountainpennetwork.com

This is the same string the "Advanced" Google Search uses (click the "Advanced" link on the Google homepage).

Paste the example and just change the purple keyword(s) - keep the site and domain name bits.

Laura is correct. But if you want to try the somewhat more automated version (which saves some keystrokes), click "Advanced Search" next to the Google box. This will display the advanced search boxes, which automatically insert some field restricters and formating for you.

I learned sumthin new and will probably use this for other apps. Thanks.