I think I may have mentioned this before... but why doesn't the forum have a search feature? This has to be the only message board I've ever used that is lacking one. It would be very useful to be able to search threads by title (at the very least) to return to threads that you may not remember where you found them. Sure, you can favorite the thread if you know you're going to follow it... but what if you don't think to do it at the time?

It's also useful when referring people to existing threads for whatever reason... if you know that thread exists, you can more easily track it down. It also can reduce spammy new threads since people can check and see if a question they have or topic already has a thread made that addresses what they wanna know. They can search for it and find it there first without having to make a new thread.

I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to suggest this.  The only reason I haven't is because I figured there must be a darn good reason one does not exist.  I mean, I can't imagine why such a populated forum board would NOT have a search option.

Singelli : Yeah... I kinda held back for the same reason but I eventually got tired of it because I needed it a few times recently... and even if there's a reason, I wanna know WHY. I dunno who actually coded the forum itself and if David would have to pay a lot of money to get something like that implemented... or if this feature was just overlooked... whatever the case, I'd just like to know why it doesn't exist and if there's any way to make it happen.

I, too, thought of suggesting this, but I just figured someone had already did and it got shot down. I usually use search features on other forums for questions (and suggestions) already asked so I can avoid causing clutter. Forums without a search function tend to make me clam up on suggestions and bug reports since, as in this case, I figure someone else might have suggested or reported what I experienced. Unless I think something is unique anyway.

That was my second reason for not posting it.  I figured it had been suggested a million times by now.

I do think it would be interesting to learn why though; You're right on that Crazy Li.  I own my own forum board, and if there's some negative aspect of a search function, it would be nice to know.

This forum doesn't have a search feature because David hasn't added one...

https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=19096

This thread was made a while ago.

Also, for the record, the restricted feature is available to only admins up. So not even I can access it.

patar4097 :

You can actually find any of your threads rather easily. Go to your profile and scroll all the way to the bottom. Click "View threads by this user" and you're set.


Crazy Li :
Singelli :
ruesen :

I realize the thread that leggy referenced is old, but this idea has been suggested a lot. That was probably the oldest one he found. There is an alternate option though. If you go to Google and type

site:vizzed.com

followed by whatever you want to search for, it will limit the search results to just Vizzed.


The search feature that does exist is referenced by geeo in this thread-

https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=8477&pl=129417

And this is a valid point regarding why it probably isn't accessible-

https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=19096&pl=284364


legacyme3 : If you want to remove any of the links I posted, feel free to do so.

legacyme3 :
BNuge :

So... there was a search feature, but it's not made efficiently enough to be safe for pubic use, is what I'm getting from all these old threads.

A forum search in essence is a database query. Technically just entering a sub-forum is a database query all in the same, but that "search" is looking for all threads in the database that match a particular sub-forum ID. A properly made search shouldn't put any more stress on the server than entering a section of the message board would, in theory.

Also, forum searches usually have limitations on them. A user should not be allowed to keep doing searches too close together... you need some sort of wait period... be it 30 seconds, a minute, or whatever makes it so that the query isn't continuously run too close together.

If that doesn't solve the problem (though I don't see why not since larger forums are able to function using this method), you could also do something like limit the used to Trusted and above or something of that nature. I kinda doubt that would be necessary though if you have a well-functioning search feature built.

By the looks of it, this board is written in PHP, which is the one web programming language I actually know. If David was interested, I could take a shot at creating a template of what such a search engine would be like. I've done database queries for the purpose of allowing user searches of site content plenty of times before (not for a message board, but that's not really important). I've never done the time limit part before, so that's the only thing I would hafta figure out for this. It doesn't really sound that hard though since forums innately run off cookies. All you would need to do is add a value to the login cookie that sets the current time whenever a search is performed and then before proceeding to submit a search query, it would check the cookie and compare the current time to the previous time and reject the submission if the time gap is too small.

Davideo7 :

Is the person you would need to speak to about that.

This has been suggested many times. This is something I'd really like to implement but just haven't had the time, especially when higher priority things always get in the way of features like this.

It's on my todo list. In the mean time, you guys will have to use BNuge's suggestion.