Forum Topic

Search facility

Can someone do something about it? It is woeful.Or am I expecting too much from it?

Jeremy Hanson ● 5023d7 Comments

M. Duley, when you said technology from the nineties I initially thought you were wrong about XML which drives the front page of this site but you weren't - it was invented in 1998. However it is only in the last few years it has really taken off with database driven sites becoming more common place. As a software expert yourself I'm sure you'll agree it isn't really a dated technology.Despite the structure of the front page the site is still using HTML pages for content so that part to it appears to be a work in progress. Other parts of the site are very much 21st century. The directory uses compression technology that wouldn't work unless you have a very up to date browser. In other words the site seems to be a mixture of old and new - it is probably a bit like the Forth Bridge in that applications on the site are developed in a very long term cycle. The forum UI is very archaic in style but this may be deliberate. There does seem to be quite complex database technology sitting behind the forum and there is a quite neat integration both with other applications on the site and external applications like Google and Twitter which didn't exist in the 90s. It could be that given that this forum seems to have quite a large following many of whom are not regular forum users they are concerned that introducing a more sophisticated UI would reduce usage. At the end of the day the quality of the community is far more important than the quality of the software.Given presumably small resources I'm quite impressed by what they have done with this site. What slightly perplexes me is that there are free and low cost modules that could have been used that would have given equal or even better functionality to the ones they've developed themselves. It may be that they have decided to go the proprietary route because they can, which wouldn't be sensible in my view. On the other hand I've been caught out by third party software so often in the past myself particularly when it comes to integrating code from two different sources that this may be there only option.

Ajay Bhatt ● 5023d

This entire site seems to be based on early 1990s code (or at least, it's designed to look and function that way) so it's probably lucky we have a search function at all!

M. Duley ● 5023d

When I search for 'guaranteed' it returns your post. Presumably in this case if there are a number of posts in the same thread with the same word in it just returns the latest. Seems logical enough. You could try asking for a refund if you remain disatisfied :)-----------------------------I now get my post but neither of yours.....Where did I put that receipt....... ;-)

Jeremy Hanson ● 5023d

When I search for 'guaranteed' it returns your post. Presumably in this case if there are a number of posts in the same thread with the same word in it just returns the latest. Seems logical enough. You could try asking for a refund if you remain disatisfied :)

Katherine Kieslowski ● 5023d

It always works okay for me. The problem seems to be that it doesn't sort by date so if you have over 100 results you aren't guaranteed to get what you are looking for so you need to search more specifically. In Ealing this isn't as much of an issue because there aren't as many messages. In Chiswick there are many more messages so people sometimes can't find what they want but the recommendation there is if the search doesn't work try Google. Perhaps Ealing is now starting to get to the same point------------------------------------The date sort I could live with (just about). It doesn't return correct results, thoughFor instance, I have just search for the word 'guaranteed' and your post does not appear in my results.Like I say, am I expecting too much?

Jeremy Hanson ● 5023d

It always works okay for me. The problem seems to be that it doesn't sort by date so if you have over 100 results you aren't guaranteed to get what you are looking for so you need to search more specifically. In Ealing this isn't as much of an issue because there aren't as many messages. In Chiswick there are many more messages so people sometimes can't find what they want but the recommendation there is if the search doesn't work try Google. Perhaps Ealing is now starting to get to the same point.

Katherine Kieslowski ● 5023d

There's a long thread on the Chiswick Forum about the search function.  Go see "To : The Editor" on the Chiswick site (started by M Dowling on the 3rd of July).

Andy Horridge ● 5023d