Search

[jobex]

How does the "Search" facility on this website work? I enter a keyword such as "resolution" to try to find anything about how to change my display to something more appropriate and I get reams of results with no obvious connection to my search parameters. I can sometimes find what I am looking for hidden in this haystack but why is all the other stuff showing up?
Perhaps I'm not using the search tool properly. If I search the whole of the Internet using Google I usually get results narrowed down to very near what I want. I appreciate that LFX forums are not Google but I find the lack of precision very frustrating. Maybe someone can show me how to carry out a successful search, say of the "Help" forum, in case I have got it quite wrong.

[Paradigm Shifter]

If you mean on the forums, well, blame that on phpBB... although many other forum systems aren't that much better.

[ajgreeny]

If you use google you need to set the site so use

Code: Select all

searchterm site:linuxformat.com/forums

in the google box and you'll get much better results.

That works for just about any website that you want to search that has no decent search system on the site itself.

[wyliecoyoteuk]

a broad search like that will return every post containing the word "resolution"

[ajgreeny]

a broad search like that will return every post containing the word "resolution"

Which is precisely why you need to learn to use better search terms or put the search phrase in quotes.

[jobex]

I'm fully aware of how to phrase search terms and gave "Resolution" as a simple example. However, no matter how simple or sophisticated the arrangement of keywords is, in my experience on this site, the results are very non-specific. I have not waded through a whole set of results but I get the impression that many do not contain any reference to the search terms I have used. I may be wrong about that as I have never checked carefully but I made this query because it seems to me that the search facility does not work well.

Thanks for the positive suggestion from ajgreeny. I will try that.

[jobex]

I have just tried

searchterm site:linuxformat.com/forums

and it works a treat. Brilliant. I hope others will find it useful too.
Thanks very much.