The NEW SEARCH is now online and live for everyone. The search has been in use for several weeks by Lifetime, Staff, and Moderators to ensure everything was working properly. This search has a number of upgrades over the previous one and I'll highlight the core ones below.





(There is also a discussion in the TEAM FORUM preview thread. )








From the image above, you can see there are a lot of options to pick
from and a new combination of search parameters. In short, you can do a
lot now and find what you need. I'll give some examples.
1) Keyword Only Searches
Search on a keyword, or keywords, by entering them into the keyword
field, then selecting to search for the phrase, any keyword, or all
keywords. This allows you to look for threads with Bushmaster and/or ACR
or "Bushmaster ACR" threads. The other keyword option is to search
thread titles or bodies for those keywords.
2) Author Only Searches
Put a username in the author field and then select if you want to look
for posted topics or replies for that user. Now you can quickly look up a
person's last X number of posts and not just threads they began.
3) Keyword + Author Searches
Combine the two to create very detailed searches. Remember an old post
by Aimless that was about Shills? Put "Shill" in the keyword, select
"thread titles" and then put "Aimless" as the author and select "threads
started by". This will narrow your search to display anything with the
title match AND authored by Aimless only. You can select any criteria,
from either search type, to create detailed searches on a specific
user's
replies, for example where they said "ranger", and it will pull it up.
("ranger" as
keyword, select search thread bodies, enter the author name as whomever
you want, and then set
the author search to "post replies by".)
4) Date Filter
With the archiving sometimes failing, this gives people the option to
search across all data currently not archived. Just choose the date
range and if the thread is "newer" or "older" than the range. This way
you can narrow down a search for a thread you know is at least 2 weeks
old.
5) Forum/Community Filter
With all this power, something had to be sacrificed, so we removed the
"search all" option. Select a community or forum to search.
6) Result Sorting
Another option to make life easier. Sort results by usernames A-Z or Z-A
or on any other possible sort option. This makes finding what you need
quicker since you can start searching results in a number of ways.
7) Display Options
You now have a choice to display results as either Threads or Posts.
Threads are your typical results, it lists "Topics" once where your
search had a result. Quickly jump to that topic like you do now. The
other option is to return results as posts. These results will contain
the first 300 characters of a post and give you a link to the thread (in
a little topic summary at the top of the result) as well as a link
directly to the post itself regardless of the page and location in a
thread.
To help keep the search from being spammed ("double taps" for example)
which may hurt performance, I've added a short search lockout. We will continue to offer a limited search
to
non-team members to ensure the load they create is minimal. I realize nobody wants
to have to wait between posts or searches or sending IMs, but we need
to concern ourselves with using resources properly and the short pause between searches is not going to harm anyone.





These delays and the "search all" limitations are subject to change as performance is monitored.



 

Months in the making to ensure it was done right.



If there's one thing about me, I don't stop working and thinking of ways to make your lives better on here. So if you happen to meet up with me one day, you'll realize why I look like a damn zombie!



 

There's always a line where performance hits need to dictate software limits. The better this thing performs, the more I can open up to everyone.





 

A search is a very complex and formal thing. It has to be powerful, flexible, easy to use, and return a variety of results in as many ways as possible to ensure it meets everyone's needs. Now I'm not saying this thing is everyone's answer, but it has more options than you'll need and probably use. The worst part is typically the resource hog it becomes, especially for a site of this size. Hopefully this thing will make everyone happy and perform at a high level.

What about it?



 

All Communities is on hold while we view resource usage across the table.



I'm confused about the 3 month search because you now have no limit at all to searching. Just pick 30 days AND OLDER for that type of search of even 24 hours and older if need be. I figured that was a pretty clear option.



 

Bah not an issue, I was confused why people kept saying "there's a 30 day limit, WTF!!! DIE CLOWN!!!!" when it's right there next to date.