Search function

ben58
A little help on the search page on how to formulate a query would be useful. E.g. I've just experimentally found out that "%" at the beginning or end of a word acts as a wildcard. But probably there are other useful rules.

If they were documented on the search page, it would greatly facilitate finding the topics already discussed - and also hopefully reduce redundant threads.
  • fcheslack
    It depends on which search you are using. The search that comes built in with the forums is still available through the link on the left side. The search box on the top right of the site uses google search for the forums.
  • ben58
    The lack of documentation/explanations is unfortunately common to both search kinds.
  • adamsmith
    OK - for the google search we could just link here:
    http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861#exceptions_punctuations

    (although this doesn't talk about the % wildcard and I don't think that actually works on google, which seems to ignore the % sign)

    Btw. Ben - the documentation is a wiki, so you can always contribute if you feel sth. is missing.
  • ben58
    Well, telling the user that the box on the top right is a google search would be helpful on itself, as most of us have experience with google search. Adding a link would be still better.
    Btw. Ben - the documentation is a wiki, so you can always contribute if you feel sth. is missing.
    Thanks for the invitation :D
    But to document anything I have to know how it functions. And I can usually only learn it from the documentation (except for what I've stumbled upon by chance, or for things I've created myself).

    But if Zotero team just took a ready forum engine and nobody there knows how the search works in detail - I could probably help with digging for information. However I would need the starting points.
  • fcheslack
    edited September 19, 2009
    The forums are Vanilla - http://vanillaforums.org/docs
    unfortunately from a quick look it seems their documentation on it may be as lacking as ours.

    edit: For my own use though, unless I know who said something, the google search generally gives me more useful results.
  • RintzeRintze
    It's slightly off-topic, but Vanilla 2 is now available (http://vanillaforums.org/), offering MySQL's fullText search (http://vanillaforums.org/page/Search) and some nice addons like Google Code Prettify (http://vanillaforums.org/addon/616/google-code-prettify) for XML syntax highlighting. Are there any plans to upgrade to Vanilla 2?
  • ajlyon
    To continue Rintze's digression, Vanilla 2 would be nice to see. It's matured by now, and we could add other features like role tags for users.
  • adamsmith
    like role tags for users
    ...which would be really, really sweet.
  • ajlyon
    http://vanillaforums.org/addon/rolebadges-plugin-0.1
    Looks very simple. The actual badges are specified and applied in CSS.
  • RintzeRintze
    edited May 22, 2013
    Assuming we won't see a quick update to Vanilla 2, would it be possible to update to 1.3.0? Apparently it has a new feature that might cut down on the forum spam. See

    https://code.google.com/p/lussumo-vanilla/
    https://lussumo-vanilla.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/CHANGELOG.txt

    "Added invisible protection against spambot registration"
  • fcheslack
    We don't use the vanilla registration so that wouldn't change anything.
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