New search box that brings up forum results too

[WSB]

Just posted announcement on the home page:

https://westseattleblog.com/blog/?p=8164

As I wrote there, this isn’t perfect, but at least it brings up forum posts as well as other site items, so let me know if you think it’s an improvement. Also note that the forum pages don’t come up with distinct headings – that’s a separate challenge – but if you look at the excerpt text and URLs, it’s clear they are distinct post results.

ever striving … TR

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[inactive]

It looks good to me TR.

But, I am wondering…are keywords/tags necessary in posts for this widget to pick it up. Should folks be putting in tags/keywords on all posts to anticipate future improvements? Or is that unnecessary? I notice that many posters don’t bother with tags.

ever appreciative –

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[WSB]

No – Google searches the body of messages. We don’t tag posts on the main page (“categories” are a different way of organizing them) and we have incredibly great search position. I am not a big “tag” fan myself but that’s what this software came with. Thanks for askin’!

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[Shibaguyz]

Very cool feature TR! Made it easier for me to find a discussion that had a link in it I wanted to pass along to a friend… just forgot which thread it was in. Thanks!

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[Franci]

I tried using it and nothing happens.. am I supposed to download something for this to work?

Franci

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[WSB]

no – you should be able to just type in the search term (as soon as you click in the box, the existing “search westseattleblog.com” type will go away and your search term will replace it) and then hit “return”/”enter” on your keyboard and your results page will come up. if that doesn’t happen, let me know what browser/OS you’re on – I’ve only used it on Mac so far … TR

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[Franci]

Tracey,

That’s exactly what I’m doing..

My browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0.29 sp 2, the OS is Windows XP PRO 5.2 sp 2

Thanks!

Franci

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[Anonymous]

TR – Thank you! I just used it and it worked great!

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[WSB]

Yikes. It’s a free widget so I don’t know how much support they’re offering but I’ll report that as a potential bug to the original source. Still looking for something comparable and may be able to find it … the results pages on this don’t allow all my favorite Google features such as cached pages and sorting by date rather than relevance, so I’m looking for that, but in the interim it’s better than a site search which is completely blind to the forum – stand by! – TR

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[Franci]

No biggie.. just thought I’d ask. I’ll try it at home on my laptop too. I know I can use the google search to find things I want. F

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