using search

[drmditch]

Good Afternoon

I'm sorry to post this question here, but I'm having a difficulty using the search facility.
Is it just me but is computer software and the web environment making people more irritable and bad tempered?

I know that at least two modellers have taken the old NRM 'Flying Scotsman' model (as LNER Green 4472 but with double kylchap exhaust and 'elephant's ears') and used to to produce interesting and more accurate models.

If I try to search for 'Flying Scotsman' and a modeller's identifier in the modelling forum I get a message saying that both words ('flying' and 'scotsman' are too common to be used.

The same happens if I include 'NRM and/or 'Hornby'.

Can anybody help me?

Is it just me not being able to use the search facility?

[richard]

I think the issue is that those words really are too common for the forum's indexing software.

It isn't clever enough to do "and" or "exclude" operations effectively, so an index for "flying" (say) comes up with a huge list of pages.

For various reasons, the search facility also has to be very fast.

The only solution is probably to replace the search engine with a whole new one. Not sure how easy that would be. There are almost certainly better search facilities - for example, my main commercial site uses a better one, but it builds the index offline. I don't think that is practical for the forums.

Here's a thought: go to the site's home page and click on "Search" down at the bottom of the page. This gives you a Google search of the site, including the forums. Yes there is advertising, and yes it searches the static pages as well, but the index should be reasonable and the Google engine is pretty good.

[drmditch]

Thank you Richard.
That has let me find the posts I was looking for, and is a most useful technique to remember for the future!

(Now back to try to find the small part I've dropped on the floor- needing a different kind of search facility!)