I have trouble using the search engine. Any chance we can have it more user friendly and acurate on what we're searching for?

Thanks for listening!!

Chris

Chris,

Out of interest, what is it you're after in terms of user-friendliness?

Beetroot

Chris, the new search engine has been discussed in detail in the announcements forum. I'm sure the answer to your questions can be found here.

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......8&44

Thanks Dave!!

Beetroot, I should have said "Dummy friendly" as I'm not too sharp witht he computer!

It's probably one of those things that once you've had a few successful goes at it'll all make sense.

The reason I asked was because (apart from perhaps cosmetic details) I would have thought it would be difficult to change what is required for input to the search.

The great thing about the search engine at the moment is that it seems to operate much more quickly than before.

Cheers,

Beetroot

That was the point of the change. Every little bit helps speed up the response time at the Café.

Post deleted by user

It definitely is improved in terms of keeping the load down on the forum.

The downside is that you now have to do 4 separate searches (to search the entire current dbase) which could before often be effectively done with only a single search.

So, it's nice that the forum is speedier and doesn't bog down, but the tradeoff is we have a search system that asks you to do 4 steps where only one generally sufficed before.

I am having a great deal of difficulty using the new search engine. This should not be taken as a criticism because this low-tech guy had a great deal of difficulty using the old search engine (kept getting zero results).

I still get zero results (when I get results) but more often than not, I keep getting a message to pick more than one option. What the heck does that mean? When I want to search for Invisible Thread (for instance) and I have that in the topic box and I have selected "all forums" and I go with the 3 month period that is showing , what more can I enter as a 2nd option?

Also, the thing I really miss is the search category that listed all the Café members in an alphebetical drop down box in the search engine format. Sometimes I couldn't remember a member's exact name but I could quickly find it via this feature. Now, I'm totally lost and the most practical way I can now find the member's name is to begin surfing various topic forum--hoping to find his name that way. (IMHO, the "Members" URL link seems to be totally useless since it is 270 pages long and not alphabetized but seems to be numbered by date of membership on the Café. As such, it is not practical. No one has the time to surf 270 pages trying to find a particular name.)

That aside, I still think the Magic Café is the best magic site on the Internet. No other site even come close.

Mike

Turk, I tried your example and got results. There is a default button click by the date field that says "no time limit". Change that to the button next to the dates and you'll see search results.
To see a list of usernames in alphabeticall order, there is a block just above the date area that says Show posts by username. To the right of that is a clickable text saying Search for usernames. That is the same alphabetical drop down box as the previous search enging. Just click it and enter a partial name or start with A if you want to see all the names alphabetically.

Not related to the search engine, but you can view the memberlist pages in any of four ways. The default is by order of the date they registered. To see them in alphabetical order, click on the column heading "Username". To view them in alphabetical order by their "from" location, click on the column heading "From". To view them in order of number of posts, click on the column heading "Posts".

Granted, the Members pages may not be of much use to the members, but the staff has several uses for them.

Dave and Mary,

Thanks for the info.

Mike