31 replies to this topic

[maceman]

I thought it would be nice to have a thread with some search tips...

 

For the life of me, I can hardly use the search accurately. There must be a trick I am missing, so anyone who can put any tips on their searches would be appreciated.

 

Okay, here is an example. Today, I am working on upgrading the cab flyers/instructions...So i am searching out media packs...So how would you search for this?

 

Big Hit (Gottlieb 1977)

 

If I search for "Big" or "Hit" I get nothing!!  I think it may because it is named Big_Hit  but regardless, this should search!!  I found it the long way by navigating, but that is not satisfactory obviously. Sometimes i don't know any other info for the table other than the name, so the name should search imo.

I am having this kind of trouble almost on any search. so there must be a better way??

 

Cheers,

Maceman

Edited by maceman, 18 January 2013 - 09:10 PM.

[htamas]

You could always use Google to search the forum... in this case, just enter the following search term:

 

big hit gottlieb site:vpforums.org

[maceman]

Wow! That is a fantastic tip !  Thanx for that!

[Noah Fentz]

I'm going to adjust the server to allow three letter searches.

 

That should help with this.

[The Loafer]

i find the forum search works 100% of the time IF i use the advance search (the little gear to the right of the search bar).  If i don't do that, VPF search sometimes seems to think i only want to search a specific forum and therefore returns nothing.  But advanced search?  works fine (minimum 4 characters of course... for now )

[maceman]

Thanx in advance Noah!

 

Loaf, it still didn't work for me in the advanced. Try Big, Hit, Big Hit

 

Nothing   This is what i mean. It happens alot.

[The Loafer]

Yes it won't right now because 3 letter words don't work... Until Noah adds this as per his message

[maceman]

I thought some more people might post some tricks!

 

I remember someone uses asterix or wildcards or something?

[chas]

i did a search for "bighitpinball"

http://www.google.co...e=hp&channel=np

[Tom1965]

I use  the Asterix " * " But it will give you a little more than your looking for  eg." bi* "

[destruk]

I am not sure why it says "no results found for id4.zip" when searching downloads for the specific romset - it's there, the id4.zip occurs in the title as well as the description, but it can't find it?

[maceman]

@chas- notice in your google search nothing from vp came up there either? weird. Anyways, we are looking to improve this search here, not google

 

@tom- thanx tom. I sometimes use that as well. Notice how what you are searching for however does not come at the top of the search? I am not sure what it is searching for, but it seems the LAST thing it finds is what i need

 

@Destruk- This is a good example. This has, if i am correct,  7 characters (if we include the period), and it is still not finding it?

 

Looks like a problem mssion control!

Maceman

[The Loafer]

Are roms part of the search path? I notice they are part of the filters, so it's possible they are not?

[s1500]

Any way to disable flood protection for searches? Honestly, 99% of all first-time searches are botched, then you quickly compensate, and then bam, it's assumed you are one of the unheard-of "search spammers" that don't exist.

[Roo]

Yeah, 3 letter words have been a problem.  It would be nice if the search supported double quotes ("big shot"), but that wouldn't help you if the file was named bigshot or big_shot.  Similar to what was mentioned, a Google search with double quotes like this can work if you are struggling:

 

site:vpforums.org "big hit" media

 

It also would help if people always named the files correctly/fully.  A search for Tales from the Crypt or even just tales will return the B2S table dead last (after a lot of other irrelevant results), because it's just named TFTC FS B2S.

 

It can also be a problem when people use different spellings (theater vs theatre) or incorrect spellings (Adams Family instead of Addams Family).  I generally just pick the most unique word from the title when searching to try and not miss anything, but there have still been times I've had to manually navigate to something.  Oh well.

[maceman]

That Very true Roo...however, I run another website with a search engine as well, using PHP... I didn't build the site, i just maintain it, but for some reason the search works great, for everything...

I just mention this as I don't think it is just a naming convention issue, although i definitely agree that a 'template' would certainly help.

My curiosity is why this one cannot work for these searches. If you type in Big or Hit (once 3 letters are allowed), it should find ONLY things like:

 

Big Hit or BiG_hIt or BIg**hiT or MamboBIG  JohnnyHIT...whatever...it should find the copmbination of those 3 letters anywhere in any sentence... Weird eh?

 

Cheers,

Maceman

[Practicedummy]

On engines like google, I think you can use quotation (or double quotes) around particular words to force the search engine to look for that specific request. I can't remember the details on this. I only had to use this a couple of times in the past several years and don't remember specifically how to implement this.

[maceman]

Here's another one. Just now, I am trying to find the Ali table JP's more recent release. It is called Ali_VP9....etc etc

Contest:

Someone find this table using THIS site's search engine (no offence Noah I am only trying to help, you know that), pretending to know nothing about the table other than the name (Ali). I will even allow Manufacturer (Stern) as a handicap.

Post results here on how you did it!

Maceman

 

PS. I know Ali is a 3 letter word, but add the _ if you want to make it 4 letters, and search for it...and post results...

 

Also, If you search for the table name: Ali VP91x 1.3 FS   it does indeed shows up... 9th down the list

Edited by maceman, 21 January 2013 - 03:13 AM.

[sleepy]

Yep. I would try "big Hit". Try using quotation marks around specific phrases, but if there is no such specific phrase,

then the search results will return nothing.

 

3 letter searches? Can we make an exception for "T2"?

[Roo]

...I run another website with a search engine as well, using PHP... I didn't build the site, i just maintain it, but for some reason the search works great, for everything...

 

Well I'm no expert, but I know that there's a lot more involved in an advanced search engine than meets the eye.  That's why Google is what it is.  Searching is usually based on what content you index ahead of time -- it's not done in real time when you do a search.  My guess would be this site currently only indexes words of at least 4 characters long.  It would waste a lot of resources indexing every instance of the words "of" and "at", wouldn't it?

 

Noah mentioned he was going to adjust something to allow three letter searches.  My guess would be that if the search engine it's using allows that change, it might take awhile to re-index all the content.  Of course I'm just guessing.