Oregon Hikers

I realize the search function is always going to be terrible at its best, because it refuses to search the words you're likely to want, like "falls" and "creek" and "elk" and any exact phrase. But lately over and over again when I try to find threads that I know I just read, on terms that it should search, I'm coming up blank.

Specific example: I just tried to find a recent thread on devil's peak. Whether I search devil's peak, devils peak, or devil* peak, I get most recent results starting way back in 2013. Yet there's this, this, and this recent posts out there.

Unfortunately, the alternative google site search tends not to even load for me--I usually have to refresh at least once to get the search box to come up. It also lacks the regular site search's options for refining, like sorting by date. Worse, it mostly returns me field guide entries instead of forum posts.

In the end I've wound up bypassing both. For the benefit of others having search frustrations, here's what's working for me instead: go straight to google. Search (for the above example): site:oregonhikers.org "devil's peak" inurl:("f=8" | "f=9")

site: obviously restricts it to searching the site. inurl:("f=8" | "f=9") searches just the trip report and trail Q&A forums (what I'm typically interested in). I've also done -field_guide when I just want to exclude the field guide.

Then after searching, I can click Tools under the search to set a date range and then set it to sort the results by date (afaik you have to specify a date range before it will let you sort by date).

The date features are why I have to go to the google site--if you didn't care about that you could just put the "devil's peak" inurl:("f=8" | "f=9") in the google search box here. But this gives me everything I was missing from the site's built-in search, and more: search specific forums, dates, exact phrases, searching "common" words, excluding words, etc.

I use the direct Google search too but I wasn't aware of the inurl: modifier; thanks!

Thanks squid! In this day and age, and with the flashy design upgrade, to have a broken search engine really is inexcusable.

Web people in charge, let us know how we can help make this site a genuinely useful resource! Thanks.

Thank you, squidvicious, for that ingenious workaround.

I might as well post this here and see if anything comes of it: We are, in fact, looking for a volunteer webmeister who can follow in Dan's noble shoes. The main responsibility would be checking in on the site, especially this forum, and working on the issues that users point out. There are still outstanding issues from the upgrade - the search feature may be one of them; the home page is another. You would need to consult with Dan for a while as there are apps and other complications involved (I cannot enlighten further on the tech aspects!).

Anyway, PM me if you're interested, and we can meet and talk about it.

On the Dog Mountain Hike page in the field guide, there's a link Search Trail Q&A for Dog Mountain. Clicking it goes to an error page that says the words "mountain" and "dog" are too common, and "dog" too short, to deign to search for.

klossner wrote: ↑

October 11th, 2018, 1:23 pm

On the Dog Mountain Hike page in the field guide, there's a link Search Trail Q&A for Dog Mountain. Clicking it goes to an error page that says the words "mountain" and "dog" are too common, and "dog" too short, to deign to search for.

That has always happened. I recommend trying the Google search.

Just after search you will see "Google Search" - I would use that one. If you are having trouble, maybe check if you have an ad blocker or javascript blocker? The regular search still has some uses, like if you want to search for a particular user.

AaronPDX wrote: ↑

June 3rd, 2018, 10:15 am

Thanks squid! In this day and age, and with the flashy design upgrade, to have a broken search engine really is inexcusable.

Web people in charge, let us know how we can help make this site a genuinely useful resource! Thanks.

My standard answer on that one is that it is very unlikely that the phpBB team is going to make a better search engine than Google.

Edit: And I just realized my response in the first paragraph is related to a question from last year. The answer is still the same though.

I'll post a reply to this thread since I found it helpful for my own troubleshooting. This might be obvious information, but it took me a while to figure out:

If you use ANY four letter word under "search for all terms" then it seems to stop at 2013. If you make sure to omit any four letter words then it works. I don't really like the google search interface mentioned above as much [though helpful, thank you!], but in some cases it may be necessary.

You can use the "search for any terms" with four letter words but it is not as useful. Seems that the best solution is to only use 5+ letter words [which makes searching for "goat rocks" or "elk lake" challenging]. You can use Snowgrass Flats for instance as a workaround but if I get one request on a Friday it would be to allow four letter word searches. Insert joke about swear words here.