Why does the search function at DVDtalk suck so heavily?
 

Not to be a negative guy or anything, and trust me, there is a ton of stuff about DVDtalk that i love, hell, i've been an active member of this site since last century, but does anybody else feel like the search function just blows on this site?

I can almost never find the title i'm looking for and heaven forbid the movie title be so obscure as to be constructed from words under four letters like "Ben Hur."

Plus, anytime i want to find a title that has a common word in it, like say for example "the wire," i have to sift through hundreds of irrelevant posts about "bird on a wire" and "wire in blood" and "wire buried deep in my ass."

I wish there was a way to make the search engine more efficient, useful and concise.

Just venting. That's what forums are for i guess.

I agree.

Yesterday I was searching for a thread I knew was there. Never could find it through search. I was searching on a simple word in the title.

The way I ended up finding it was looking at my account info page and looking at the threads that I had posted to.

Yeah, I wish the search function didn't suck so badly, or else you could've found this entire subforum where a thread like this should be posted.

-JP

try and look up a review for "The Cat in the Hat".....

:(

We've already had a thread on this topic. Next time SEARCH ya n00b.

adding an actors name into the search, or something else you know would be in a thread youre looking for helps.

such as doing a search for the movie "saw", adding elwes to the search helps because everyone mentions his crappy acting in it. though still not perfect, it will help you a little more.

I just did a search on "saw" and "elwes" and it brought me back here!!!

The trick is to start using unique words that don't exist in threads you think that you might revisit in the future. I makes the search process more otterrangular.

Geoff made a post back in Jan with this..

Quote:
There's a bug in the search architecture that we can not fix. Basically it is looking in the POST only, not the thread title. So to work around. Do an advanced search and select "Search Titles" and you'll probably be able to find what you are looking for.

i always click on "search in titles only" and have had tremendous success.

There's a "search in titties only" option? My, how Adult Talk has grown.

I don't buy that explanation, the search doesn't search the POST correctly either. That's the problem with using software which isn't open-source, so it can't be fixed. vBulliten is now version 3.0.8 and has been around for 7 years and search still doesn't work!? I love this sites contents, but having a crappy search function is just stupid.

Want an example it doesn't work? okay here's one.

Go to the DVD Talk Covers, Cases & Inserts forum and do a search on "network". You won't get any matches. But there's two posts right in the " The official "Does this movie come with an insert" thread - Part Duex" thread on page 22.

Why the hell doesn't that work? Explain me that one :hscratch: ;)

I don't know .. I only reposted what Geoff posted.. I'm pretty sure he has looked into it..We're obviously not going to switch forums because search isn't perfect....so I guess everybody has to live with it the way it is...I don't really know what else to say ..

Yeah, that's odd. Doesn't work for other words like "bunch" either. It does come up if you search only in that thread, though. :confused:

Does this site use MySQL?

It uses PHP and MySQL, and vBulletin for the forum software.

The more focused the result you're looking for, the more focused your search needs to be.

For example: if you're looking for a particular Gilmore Girls episode thread, try "Gilmore Girls" and "search titles only" rather than typing gilmore girls in the default search box.

I agree that the search feature here needs work, but you have to put some thought into your searches as well.

Yeah. I wonder if the software builds it own index somehow or if it relies on the field types and indexing in MySQL...