Chris M
12-21-2005, 06:28 PM
Ok - The search isn't working - Not good :disappointed:
Short, common words like 'post' or 'user' or 'hack' are not going to help - They are frequent words which appear in probably half of all of the posts on this site; You're not going to get the most accurate results you could, plus, they are likely to crash the search
The way to get around this is to disect what you are looking for - Let's say someone was looking for the "Latest Thread on Forum Home" hack (written by me for 3.5) for example;
latest thread on forum home is a bad thing to search for - While you're attempting accuracy, you're setting yourself up for the search to fail, or bring in results you don't want - Remember, just because "welcome panel" is a welcome panel to you, it may be a "information box" to a hack author, so be clued in to other terms for what you are looking for
So of that search, we can get rid of 2 words already: on, home
That leaves you with a nice and simple keyword search; latest thread forum
Let's try another; "Put a Column on the RIGHT side of every forum page" hack written by amykhar for 3.5:
Put a Column on the RIGHT side of every forum page - This is far too generic a search term - You've got alot of small words in there, some of which will get filtered out by the search anyway, so lets cut this down some;
column right side every forum page
While you've cut it down to 6 keywords, you've removed 5! You've just saved yourself the hassle of someone else maybe calling it "Put an information box on the far edge of all your forum pages" and you missing out on potential results!
Ok in the last examples I gave, I warned about other potential hazards, such as an author naming their hack something other than what makes sense to you; So how do you combat this? - It's pretty simple really :)
What makes searching for things even more complicated, is if you don't know who the author is... If you didn't know that Xenon made the "display forums on forumhome in columns" hack you'd pretty much have a hard time finding out where to look...
So one tip, is to search for the author ;)
Another tip to combatting the dreaded "no results" or "crashed page" error, is by narrowing down your search...
Most people just click the search link above, type their query into the box and expect it to find what you want...
What you may not be aware of is, there is a second search feature, which is just a few more clicks worth of effort to enable you to find what you are looking for...
It's called the Advanced Search, and isn't that difficult to use ;)
Firstly, the page layout is useful - The left hand text box, is for your query, such as "latest thread forum" - The right hand text box, is for your author, such as "Chris M" or "Xenon"
You now have some options presented below these boxes; Don't be confused!
Generally, you needn't worry about the left-hand side options; These are only if you want to be really specific, i.e. you are looking for a thread with more than or less than a specific number of replies, or wish to sort them out by a different sorting method, or search for threads / posts between or on specific dates...
The right hand options, however, is ultra-useful... Why?
This allows you to select what forums to search in ;)
Now surprisingly, most hackers who release hacks which are favourites (and even those which aren't :( *sigh* mine suck :p) have maybe a vBulletin 2 (if they were here at that time), almost certainly a vBulletin 3 and obviously a vBulletin 3.5 version of their hacks, sometimes entitled very similar or even the same as previous versions...
This means that "latest thread forum" will probably return a "Latest Threads on Forum Home" hack from both the 3.5 plugin forum (my version) and the 3.0.x forumhome enhancements forum (NTLDR's version) - Not very good, and this causes confusion for people looking for 3.5 or 3.0.x hacks only...
So learn how to use this marvellous tool; Click the forum you want to search, and select (or de-select) to search in child forums - Generally, what you think a hack will be like for 3.5 and what it is may differ, with Plugins and Extensions coming into play, so don't select each individual type of hack unless you are sure; Click the "3.5 Modifications" category to search the entire 3.5 section for anything relating to it...
So why is this useful?
Well, aside from multi-version hack results from searching the entire forum, you don't get every single reference from every forum to the hack you are looking for or un-related articles...
At the end of the day, you need to wise up to the Advanced Search feature of this site; It will save you time, and will return more likely and accurate results than the standard search feature :)
I'll be updating this post with any other tips I can think of but if you have any for me, please, feel free to PM me and I'll add them here :)
Chris
Short, common words like 'post' or 'user' or 'hack' are not going to help - They are frequent words which appear in probably half of all of the posts on this site; You're not going to get the most accurate results you could, plus, they are likely to crash the search
The way to get around this is to disect what you are looking for - Let's say someone was looking for the "Latest Thread on Forum Home" hack (written by me for 3.5) for example;
latest thread on forum home is a bad thing to search for - While you're attempting accuracy, you're setting yourself up for the search to fail, or bring in results you don't want - Remember, just because "welcome panel" is a welcome panel to you, it may be a "information box" to a hack author, so be clued in to other terms for what you are looking for
So of that search, we can get rid of 2 words already: on, home
That leaves you with a nice and simple keyword search; latest thread forum
Let's try another; "Put a Column on the RIGHT side of every forum page" hack written by amykhar for 3.5:
Put a Column on the RIGHT side of every forum page - This is far too generic a search term - You've got alot of small words in there, some of which will get filtered out by the search anyway, so lets cut this down some;
column right side every forum page
While you've cut it down to 6 keywords, you've removed 5! You've just saved yourself the hassle of someone else maybe calling it "Put an information box on the far edge of all your forum pages" and you missing out on potential results!
Ok in the last examples I gave, I warned about other potential hazards, such as an author naming their hack something other than what makes sense to you; So how do you combat this? - It's pretty simple really :)
What makes searching for things even more complicated, is if you don't know who the author is... If you didn't know that Xenon made the "display forums on forumhome in columns" hack you'd pretty much have a hard time finding out where to look...
So one tip, is to search for the author ;)
Another tip to combatting the dreaded "no results" or "crashed page" error, is by narrowing down your search...
Most people just click the search link above, type their query into the box and expect it to find what you want...
What you may not be aware of is, there is a second search feature, which is just a few more clicks worth of effort to enable you to find what you are looking for...
It's called the Advanced Search, and isn't that difficult to use ;)
Firstly, the page layout is useful - The left hand text box, is for your query, such as "latest thread forum" - The right hand text box, is for your author, such as "Chris M" or "Xenon"
You now have some options presented below these boxes; Don't be confused!
Generally, you needn't worry about the left-hand side options; These are only if you want to be really specific, i.e. you are looking for a thread with more than or less than a specific number of replies, or wish to sort them out by a different sorting method, or search for threads / posts between or on specific dates...
The right hand options, however, is ultra-useful... Why?
This allows you to select what forums to search in ;)
Now surprisingly, most hackers who release hacks which are favourites (and even those which aren't :( *sigh* mine suck :p) have maybe a vBulletin 2 (if they were here at that time), almost certainly a vBulletin 3 and obviously a vBulletin 3.5 version of their hacks, sometimes entitled very similar or even the same as previous versions...
This means that "latest thread forum" will probably return a "Latest Threads on Forum Home" hack from both the 3.5 plugin forum (my version) and the 3.0.x forumhome enhancements forum (NTLDR's version) - Not very good, and this causes confusion for people looking for 3.5 or 3.0.x hacks only...
So learn how to use this marvellous tool; Click the forum you want to search, and select (or de-select) to search in child forums - Generally, what you think a hack will be like for 3.5 and what it is may differ, with Plugins and Extensions coming into play, so don't select each individual type of hack unless you are sure; Click the "3.5 Modifications" category to search the entire 3.5 section for anything relating to it...
So why is this useful?
Well, aside from multi-version hack results from searching the entire forum, you don't get every single reference from every forum to the hack you are looking for or un-related articles...
At the end of the day, you need to wise up to the Advanced Search feature of this site; It will save you time, and will return more likely and accurate results than the standard search feature :)
I'll be updating this post with any other tips I can think of but if you have any for me, please, feel free to PM me and I'll add them here :)
Chris