Is the forum search broken?

[100thMonkey]

I used to be able to do searches in the forum, but now, any search I attemp gives a message saying that the search found nothing, even when I KNOW that it should have found something. And I set the search options to cast the widest possible net. I use Firefox (v50.1.0), and I tried with other browsers, with the same results.

Is it just me, or is the search completely broken?

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: 100thMonkey

I used to be able to do searches in the forum, but now, any search I attemp gives a message saying that the search found nothing, even when I KNOW that it should have found something. And I set the search options to cast the widest possible net. I use Firefox (v50.1.0), and I tried with other browsers, with the same results.

Is it just me, or is the search completely broken?

warspite1

Been like it for a while - it appears completely knackered [&:]

[100thMonkey]

I'll PM Erik Rutins about it. Maybe "they" (the powers that be) don't know about it. I'll update with the results­...

[100thMonkey]

I wasn't able to PM Erik. When I tried, I got a message saying that his PM box was full. I'll try again later and update the thread if I manage to contact Erik.

[Retreat1970]

I've noticed in the past that it will only search about a year or so back. The only way to search is with google.

[100thMonkey]

Hi Retreat. I tried with 1 year, 6 and 3 months, without any success. Did you use the search recently? Maybe it got worse since the last time you used it...

[100thMonkey]

Regarding searching with Google: is there a way to search only in the Distant Worlds forum, and not the other Matrix forums? If so, could you indicate me how (or point me somewhere where there's info on how to do it)?

[Retreat1970]

Add site:www.matrixgames.com to the end of your search query.

example: gas mining site:www.matrixgames.com

[100thMonkey]

Thanks Retreat. But that searches in all the Matrix Games forums, not only the Distant Worlds forum. And depending on the search query, it can return a lot of noise (unwanted results having to do with other games). With the sample query you gave in your post ("gas mining"), it seems to return mostly stuff about DW, but let's say I want to search for the threads on "ship design", and I use that instead of "gas mining", Google also returns a lot of stuff for other Matrix Games.

I was hoping for a way to limit the search to the DW forum. I tried replacing the matrix games address with the address of the DW forum page, but that doesn't work either.

Maybe it's not possible to do what I want to do. But if anybody knows a way to do it, please let us know.

[frugaldude]

Go to the matrix main page. Use the icon on the upper left of this page
Select search in the top bar which gives a customized google search box
Input: distant worlds + your search term
I use the "+" character. Not sure if that is necessary.

[100thMonkey]

Thanks Frugaldude. But just like the suggestion from Retrat1970, that doesn't really limit the search to the DW Forum. It might seems to, depending on the search key, but it doesn't.

For instance, if I specify "Distant Worlds + Troop Generals", it seems, from the first result page, to have returned only results from the DW forum. But the following pages contain results for other games (for instance: "Ultimate General: Civil War"). And it is much more obvious if I use only "Generals" as the search key ("Distant Worlds + Generals). In that case, there are many results for other games, even on the first results page.

But thanks anyway to both you and Retreat1970: your suggestions at least allow to do searches in the forum.

[100thMonkey]

Regarding my attempts to PM Erik, I still haven't been able to (I always get the same message saying that his box is full). Does anybody have been able to PM him lately?

[Sabranan]

Erik does have an email option on his profile page. Might be worth trying that?

As for searching, you can use:

searchterm ">> Distant Worlds Series >>" site:www.matrixgames.com

That should catch all the subforms too, if you want to specify a subform you can use something like:

searchterm ">> Distant Worlds Series >> Design and Modding" site:www.matrixgames.com

Whereas "Distant Worlds Series" on its own will come up with everything because Google finds the term in the "Jump to" list at the bottom of every page.