Page 1 of 1

Question about searching Joomla forums

Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 4:56 pm
by pantichd
Hello,

I wanted to find a specific entry that I had made in one of the forums so I put in my login name in the search box. My expectation was to get a result list of all the entries that I have posted.

Instead I got an empty list.

Then I opened a brand new browser window (just for the heck of it) and tried again. This time I got some results but only about 4-5 and I've made about 10 times that many posts/replies.

Now, I know that I can go into my profile and look at the "current topic notifications" to see the posts that I'm "watching" and I know that I can also do the "show posts" option in my profile to see them. However, what if I want to search for something by some other author?

I thought maybe I could use the advanced search option to search for everything by a specific author but that doesn't allow wildcards in the "Search for:" box.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Thanks!

Re: Question about searching Joomla forums

Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 6:41 pm
by RobInk
Moderator note; moving from General >> S&I Workgroup forum

Re: Question about searching Joomla forums

Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 7:05 pm
by Tonie
This is a limitation in the search engine of the SMF forum. If you want to search for your own posts, you can also click on 'Profile' --> 'Show posts'.

Re: Question about searching Joomla forums

Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 10:06 pm
by pantichd
RobInk,

Thanks for moving my post. I wasn't sure where it should go.

Are there any plans on 'enhancing' the search functionality?

As I said in my original post, I know I have a couple of options for seeing my posts from my profile but I'd still like to have a way to search for posts by other people.

Thanks again!

Re: Question about searching Joomla forums

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 7:30 am
by ot2sen
pantichd wrote:Now, I know that I can go into my profile and look at the "current topic notifications" to see the posts that I'm "watching" and I know that I can also do the "show posts" option in my profile to see them. However, what if I want to search for something by some other author?

I thought maybe I could use the advanced search option to search for everything by a specific author but that doesn't allow wildcards in the "Search for:" box.

Hi pantichd,

If you want everything by a specific author and cant use wildcards, then you could use the memberlist search instead:
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?actio ... ;sa=search
That would give you the same option of profile 'show posts' for that specific author.

Re: Question about searching Joomla forums

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 1:54 pm
by Websmurf
Well.. I don't know if that is some weirdness, but this is good to know:

As far as I can tell, when you are inside a forum, SMF will search in that forum only (in stead of searching the full forum).
If you use the advanced search, or the search on the index page, it will search the entire forum.

Re: Question about searching Joomla forums

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 2:14 pm
by pantichd
ot2sen wrote:If you want everything by a specific author and cant use wildcards, then you could use the memberlist search instead:
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?actio ... ;sa=search
That would give you the same option of profile 'show posts' for that specific author.



Although it's not as straightforward as I had been looking for it does accomplish what I wanted.

Thanks ot2sen!