The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum - View Single Post - The Search Function (Or, "Is it just MY computer...??")

***Mister Underhill*** · 11-18-2003, 04:25 PM

Your connection speed does not affect the speed of the search. All that’s going across the connection is the parameters of the search from your end to our server and then a return list of topics from the server back to you. The biggest single factor in the length of a search will be the parameters that you use, because they will determine how hard the server has to work to conduct the search.

All things being equal, Books searches will usually take the longest because it’s the biggest forum.

Entire Message searches will take much longer than Subject Only searches.

My experience has been that searching using Match any (as opposed to Match all) of the search terms produces faster results. Of course there are circumstances where you need to Match all to get the result you’re looking for, but it can’t hurt to try Match any first.

My experience has also been that the fewer search terms you use, the faster things run (e.g., searching on only one word will be fastest).

If you’re searching for a specific thread but can't remember its title, a good strategy to use is to try to recall a fairly unique word that appeared in one of the posts and search on that. For instance, if you remember that Sharkû used the word “argumentation” on the thread, Search “argumentation”, “Match any of the search terms”, “Entire Message”, Member Number “3”.

As Sharkey mentioned, the Search function unfortunately does not distinguish punctuation marks. So Valar and Valar. will yield different results. On the upside, you can sometimes use this to your advantage. If you remember that you wrote a sentence that contained haggard followed by a semicolon, searching on haggard; will probably nail the topic you’re looking for.

It would be nice if the “By Date” parameters were a little more useful for our purposes: Since 6 months ago, Since 1 year ago, Since 2 years ago, or something to that effect. This would require sifting through the UBB code and trying to hack it. I’ll add it to my list of “would be neat to have” features that I may someday have the free time to get to.

Hope these tips help a bit.

[ November 19, 2003: Message edited by: Mister Underhill ]

11-18-2003, 04:25 PM	#10
*Mister Underhill* Dread Horseman Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Behind you! Posts: 2,744	Your connection speed does not affect the speed of the search. All that’s going across the connection is the parameters of the search from your end to our server and then a return list of topics from the server back to you. The biggest single factor in the length of a search will be the parameters that you use, because they will determine how hard the server has to work to conduct the search. All things being equal, Books searches will usually take the longest because it’s the biggest forum. Entire Message searches will take much longer than Subject Only searches. My experience has been that searching using Match any (as opposed to Match all) of the search terms produces faster results. Of course there are circumstances where you need to Match all to get the result you’re looking for, but it can’t hurt to try Match any first. My experience has also been that the fewer search terms you use, the faster things run (e.g., searching on only one word will be fastest). If you’re searching for a specific thread but can't remember its title, a good strategy to use is to try to recall a fairly unique word that appeared in one of the posts and search on that. For instance, if you remember that Sharkû used the word “argumentation” on the thread, Search “argumentation”, “Match any of the search terms”, “Entire Message”, Member Number “3”. As Sharkey mentioned, the Search function unfortunately does not distinguish punctuation marks. So Valar and Valar. will yield different results. On the upside, you can sometimes use this to your advantage. If you remember that you wrote a sentence that contained haggard followed by a semicolon, searching on haggard; will probably nail the topic you’re looking for. It would be nice if the “By Date” parameters were a little more useful for our purposes: Since 6 months ago, Since 1 year ago, Since 2 years ago, or something to that effect. This would require sifting through the UBB code and trying to hack it. I’ll add it to my list of “would be neat to have” features that I may someday have the free time to get to. Hope these tips help a bit. [ November 19, 2003: Message edited by: Mister Underhill ]