Advanced Search

[truk4u]

Since some have issues with Advanced Search, I thought it best to get the topic over here.

Skiffer - Advanced Search works fine for me, but seems like a few are having problems.

Any ideas?

[Orren Zook]

Tom,
With Windows Vista and XP, I've had some issues with the Mozilla and Avant browsers not displaying some options correctly on other web sites. Perhaps using a current release of Microsoft Internet Explorer would solve the problems with the Advanced Search.

[Ray Davis]

I think there is a disconnect between "works for me", and "provides useful results". My experience is that it works, but it is nearly impossible to come up with search criteria that provide meaningful results. This is NOT a browser issue, but a function of how the vBulletin does it's searching.

Ray

[JIM CHALOUPKA]

I think there is a disconnect between "works for me", and "provides useful results". My experience is that it works, but it is nearly impossible to come up with search criteria that provide meaningful results. This is NOT a browser issue, but a function of how the vBulletin does it's searching.

Ray

I agree with Ray, it works, but is kinda worthless!

JIM

[Ray Davis]

Here is a perfect example. I have decided I wanted to install the 24v Guest Charger that many people have mentioned here in the forums. So I go to advanced search. I would like to search for both words (guest and charger) being in the same post. In older versions of vbulletin you could specify "guest AND charger", and this would work.

No matter what combination of normal search type syntax I tried, every post that came up had one or the other words, but not necessarily both.

For example, tried:

guest charger
guest AND charger
guest + charger
guest +charger
"guest charger"

Bottom line, I got a ton of posts with charger, but it didn't drill down to be specific enough to be helpful. Unfortunately, the word "guest" is used all over the place, as is charger.

That's what I mean when it returns less than useful results.

Ray

[jimshoen]

The search feature of our web site is no good.

[HarborBus]

Ray, here is one of the posts your looking for. I kept it foe the wiring diagram. http://forum.prevostownersgroup.com/showthread.php?t=3663

[truk4u]

Ray, your the computer expert, but I keyed in guest charger and got 26 posts with about as much guest charger information as I could stand.

I don't get it.. What do you want it to do?

[garyde]

Hi Ray. I put a Guest charger on my batterries and it works great. Call me for info.

[aggies09]

Just my experience, but without doubt, every time i have tried to search a specific topic I get all kinds of threads that have nothing to do with what i am searching for. I am not beyond operator error, but I have found the search function mostly worthless.

[Ray Davis]

Ray, your the computer expert, but I keyed in guest charger and got 26 posts with about as much guest charger information as I could stand.

I don't get it.. What do you want it to do?

Out of how many incorrect threads? I just did exactly the same search, it comes up with 100 threads. Clicking through each of the top 10 threads, not one was about Guest Chargers. They all had the word charger in the thread, but not guest, nor guest charger.

I want to be able to search with more than a single word, and get a result which is limited to posts (or threads) which contain both words. Yes, I was able to find the thread I needed ultimately, but only after sifting through 15-20 threads which had nothing to do with guest charger.

Perhaps since you are an administrator, your search function is different than regular accounts? Maybe that's why we're seeing different results?

Ray

[truk4u]

Hmmm,

I'll defer this one to Skiffer!

[jimtest1]

Adding a tag or tags under the Add/Edit Tags button (lower right when you post a reply or add a thread) will help in the search process.

(Yes that's me I was test some things!)

Jim

[Ray Davis]

Absolutely. Bad news is a large amount of our golden nuggets pre-date the time when the tagging capability was added. But, it's certainly a good thing to remember to do that now, even to older posts.

It's just interesting to me that the older vBulletin software did a much better job searching. I use it on our Pixar support site, and it works very well. Multi-word searches are just not functional here for me.

Ray

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Jeff Bailey had the right idea but to compile the information that is posted it is going to take a team of folks to go through all the posts and cut and paste the golden nuggets.

In between all the horseplay and unrelated remarks this site has a substantial amount of information about dealing with problems, sources for information or parts as well as personal experiences. There are more than enough active members on POG to be able to distribute the responsibility for various categories or threads to make relatively quick work to create a document that can be kept up to date and which could serve as the POG reference book.

But to pull it together someone with the skills necessary to herd cats needs to take control.

[flloyd]

The key problem is the software that runs this site. It's a package known as vBulletin, which I also use on my ham radio website. Frankly stated, vBulletin's search capabilities stink.

I solved this problem on my site by letting Google search the site. The Google search engine can find things that vBulletin can't even attempt. My site has 400,000 members and over a million posts, so some sort of indexing was a must.

To make it possible for Google to do the search, you have to give Google the equivalent of a user account so that it's engine can browse the site. Even though some things can then be found by non-members, they still can't visit the site without being members. It works well.

-fred

[Jim Skiff]

Thanks Ray, Jon & Fred.

I'll see what I can do about getting the Google Search Feature.

Jim

[ajducote]

Jim,

I would like to raise a caution about using google search. I would not want a lot of the information we post on POG to "leak out" via google. Over time we have posted address, phone numbers, who is traveling, etc. Having a closed system provides us some protection from "unknown" internet users. Using google search may allow anyone to see some of this information. I do not know this for a fact, but please check with your web guru before opening up to google.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

While the Google search feature may enable someone to find something they know is on one of the posts, having a reference document will be worth its weight in carbon emissions.

For a relatively inexperienced owner a single readible document with the collected wisdom in the form of links, articles, and personal experiences will be so much more valuable than having the ability to do a Google search it will boggle the mind. Most of us haven't a clue about something unless we hear about it from someone, or experience it ourselves. When we are less experienced we don't even know what questions to ask or what information we should know. What good is doing a Google search if we don't know what we are looking for? After having gone through the experience of learning about stuff only after something broke, I know I would have benefitted highly from having a listing of things POG members consider worth knowing and including in a reference. Look at a lot of the posts that originate because an owner has a problem, and consider how many of those problems we able to be prevented if the owner knew what others have learned through experience. When Michael couldn't get his coach to come to driving height he could have found the reason and in most cases, Michael's included, there are usually subtle clues that precede most failures. Wouldn't it be great if every owner knew from this reference document that the battery life is controlled by how the inverters are set up for charging? It certainly would be better to scan a document and see a reference to batteries or inverters and learn how the two relate, and not find out until after cooking a $2500 set of batteries.

Let me cite a few examples. How many times have we seen folks start chasing problems with the "leans" by starting with their auxiliary air compressor? If a new owner hasn't run across posts or threads relating to the leans it is completely within reason for that owner to focus on the loss of air pressure. I know, I see the emails and PMs asking about that.

Until someone starts experiencing overheating problems how many owners even consider that unlike cars our engine coolant and its maintenance is a major contributor to our engine's health? We have some great indepth discussions about coolant, types, and the underlying reasons for maintaining the coolant. Until an owner experiences problems most give no consideration to coolant changes, but if as part of our reference document there is a topic about coolant maintenance, an owner not only has the data and sources, he is made aware this is a topic he needs to know. Google certaily isn't going to make him think about it, until he does the Google search on overheating and finds the related posts and links. When the bus is overheating it's too late to start maintaining coolant.

There are many other examples but suffice it to say if we create a reference document, an index, or some single source point to find information just the listing of available information is going to arouse interest and allow and owner to fill in gaps of knowledge he likely wasn't even aware he had.

I'd also be willing to be that even those of us who are really comfortable with our knowledge of the coach would like to review certain topics just to make sure we still understand the subject and need to keep it in the back of our mind.

Just my brain dump for today.

[Jeff Bayley]

I guess I missed this entire thread from before and happened across it. Regarding compiling the information within, if the idea of combing the site for past posts seems to exhaustive of an under taking, what about at least starting from this point forward and begin taking the meat of informative threads and start compiling ? If we never went back and found the old info then a year from now we would have the making of a good additional resource. If we could lay the foundation, maybe members would browse through it and could at least remember their own meaningful posts and go back and find them to append the reference material. With the current Advanced Search not giving results however, it would be hard for most of the regular contributors to even find their own posts that are more than a few months old. Being able to search the site effectively is essential to putting the master document together unless everyone wants to recreate their content all over again. Can Truk or Skiff tell what became of the Google Search suggestion ?