Advanced Search of PWP Forums

[tomczak]

The forum's FAQ mentions a link to advanced search - I can't find it. Is there a way of using some sort of boolean search of the forum?

[ksinkel]

The only search of the current forum that I am aware of is the search field displayed above the topics. There is also a search of our older message board accessed via the Search Archive choice to the left of the Login/Logout option.

Kiril

[tomczak]

phpBP FAQ mentions an 'Advanced Search' - perhaps there is a switch in their Admin panel to show it?

http://www.dl-c.com/board/faq.php#f70

The only reason I'm asking is that often searches return no results because the search terms are, I think, treated as joined by OR - and there are too many hits. For instance, I remembered vaguely a discussion on Color Balance (and whether its Auto settings are trained on each image in turn or the first one in a sequence) - I tried to look for 'color' and 'balance', but couldn't get to it. Then I figured I probably commented on it, so I went through my own posts and eventually found it. I was hoping for something like AND or NOT but I couldn't figure out how to do it.

[Dieter Mayr]

Kiril,

On the php site, in the support forum there is a "Advanced Search" function:

Search.png (24.73 KiB) Viewed 7195 times

Offers a bunch of search functuions:
https://www.phpbb.com/community/search.php

[ksinkel]

An option is to use Google Advanced Search. In addition to boolean operators for search terms, it allows you to restrict the search to a particular site or domain. I just tried it for color balance and retrieved many forum posts.

Kiril

[mjdl]

For what it's worth, here's what I do to search the Picture Window support board using Google and the Firefox browser.
1) I use Firefox's "Search Bar" function, the text search field that is part of the default top bar at the top of the Firefox window, and I also use "Add to Search Bar" and "Organize Search Engines" Firefox add-ons to add and edit search engines to the drop-down list of that text search field.
2) All such addition search engines are stored as individual XML format files (XML files are the cigarette butts of the Internet, but I digress...) in the "searchplugins" folder in your Firefox profile folder. Your current profile folder may be found by displaying the URL about:support. The searchplugins folder is scanned each time Firefox starts and new searchplugin files are recognized then and added to the drop-down list.
3) To search Google for forum postings, append the search terms to the search operator terms

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site:dl-c.com inurl:board/viewtopic.php

4) With a little editing, that leads to the following searchplugin contents:

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<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/" xmlns:os="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<os:ShortName>DL-C.COM board - Google Search</os:ShortName>
<os:Description>DL-C.COM board - Google Search</os:Description>
<os:InputEncoding>UTF-8</os:InputEncoding>
<os:Image width="16" height="16">data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQCAYAAAAf8/9hAAABHElEQVQ4jZ2TPUvDUBSGD/6X/gbBzbH9B67+Ah0EKYE2lLpUMtghiBRL2g5dLIpCEAp+TKIOFRFcBPsVEEobuxiIfRyCxo9Ebjqc4T33nuec+3KuZMVP54VhXiBhDLPip2XO4i+IxB1aG2BtQuca3mdwUoGdxb/3IgEtE2paqB86cH4c3SgSMHVhdyXUe6vw5iUAuBOwa6E2UtB9SgCoroHnQXkJCgL2PmzHeBVrYkmgug4zfj5HGfAZry7c3wSTKAPKy3BogqVBswTjEQx6UFQBNHS4vQT9W64o0H0Gu64AcPrBAkUtVvtAAXBhB922fuWv2mAsKAAKAkcmvAzg8Q7OWnBaB+MfE+f+TDnBEU38TE5wkhbrQl8TP/MBHZunUIwQaBgAAAAASUVORK5CYII=</os:Image>
<UpdateInterval>1</UpdateInterval>
<SearchForm>https://www.google.ca/</SearchForm>
<os:Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="https://www.google.ca/search">
  <os:Param name="q" value="site%3Adl-c.com+inurl%3Aboard%2Fviewtopic.php+{searchTerms}"/>
</os:Url>
</SearchPlugin>

5) Copy and save that text into a file dl-c-board-search.xml in the searchplugins profile folder, and restart your Firefox browser. You should now have "DL-C.COM board - Google Search" as one of the choices in the search bar dropdown list.
6) I hope this searchplugin works for Firefox users; I did try it in a new Firefox profile and it works for me.

[minolta]

For what it's worth, here's what I do to search the Picture Window support board using Google and the Firefox browser.
1) I use Firefox's "Search Bar" function, the text search field that is part of the default top bar at the top of the Firefox window, and I also use "Add to Search Bar" and "Organize Search Engines" Firefox add-ons to add and edit search engines to the drop-down list of that text search field.
..........................
6) I hope this searchplugin works for Firefox users; I did try it in a new Firefox profile and it works for me.

Thank you for this great tip! Your instructions were clear enough for me to follow. Not only does it work like a charm, I learned some new things about Firefox, too!

[den]

Thank you 'mjdl'... ...like 'minolta' your instructions/script work for me with Firefox 24...

...den...

[mjdl]

Here are updated Firefox search plugin files for the old archived DL-C.COM board and for the current DL-C.COM board which have a proper DL-C.COM embedded icon, rather than a generic Google search icon.

Save this as e.g. dl-c-com-new-board.xml:

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<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/" xmlns:os="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<os:ShortName>DL-C.COM new board - Google</os:ShortName>
<os:Description>DL-C.COM new board - Google</os:Description>
<os:InputEncoding>UTF-8</os:InputEncoding>
<os:Image width="16" height="16">data:image/png;base64,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</os:Image>
<UpdateInterval>1</UpdateInterval>
<SearchForm>http://www.dl-c.com</SearchForm>
<os:Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="https://google.ca/search">
  <os:Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}+site:dl-c.com+inurl:viewtopic"/>
</os:Url>
</SearchPlugin>

And save this as e.g. dl-c-com-old-board.xml:

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<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/" xmlns:os="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<os:ShortName>DL-C.COM old board - Google</os:ShortName>
<os:Description>DL-C.COM old board - Google</os:Description>
<os:InputEncoding>UTF-8</os:InputEncoding>
<os:Image width="16" height="16">data:image/png;base64,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</os:Image>
<UpdateInterval>1</UpdateInterval>
<SearchForm>http://www.dl-c.com</SearchForm>
<os:Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="https://www.google.ca/search">
  <os:Param name="q" value="site%3Adl-c.com+inurl%3Adiscus%2Fmessages+{searchTerms}"/>
</os:Url>
</SearchPlugin>