Search System

[markopolo2002]

OK, I'm going to put myself out in the open on this one as I think I could be part of the minority here who has issues with the new search system.

I appreciate the new search system is powerful and a vast improvement on the previous ones and where it will be a 100% improvement for some forums, for others, like our users, it seems to be a real turn off.

The biggest problem we have is the defaulting of the area it's searching. Our home page is IPContent, we only have a couple of pages setup in IPContent, our main focus is on the downloads yet when people hit our front page they will instinctively search for something, be met with no results (because it's defaulting to search 'pages' and a whole load of headings like "Forums - Members - Help Files - Calendar - Downloads - Pages".

I've received around 35 contacts over the past few months from both guest's and members asking what is going on with the search system, they just want to search and find the most relevant results for their keywords, usually from the download system. I've even had to include a google site search now to try and alleviate the situation but it's not exactly ideal having 2 search functions on the site!.

Now I know I could be in the minority and as such custom solutions are impractical, but wouldn't it be possible to have an option in the ACP forcing the search default to a specific section, such as downloads, gallery, blogs, or even forums?. I've no idea of the consequences of providing such an option, but thought I'd throw this one out there in case it's not been suggested before or anyone else is maybe thinking the same thing?
Cheers
Marko

[Worldoversea]

Your not alone Marco, one of the many reasons I'm only testing 3.1.2 and still have a 2.3.6 live board.

JB

[Fobi]

I am with you guys, search should be easy and it's now 10 times worse. There should be options to chose sections with weight or just one search based on keywords and full text search.

For me tabs in search results are horrible, no to mention select (drop down) list on search field in header. I wan't to find answers not to create another problems.

Search results should be on one page with different sections mentioned for example

Search results -
forums
-
-
-
-
Blogs
-
-
-
Pages
-
-
-
Downloads
-
-
-

About sections + weights - looking at above example you could choose what sections are the most important, for markopolo2002 it would be "downloads"
for me "forums than pages" for someone else let say calendar events (event driven website) etc.

[Cheyne]

im having this exact same issue, I just want the default search option to be 'forums", does anyone know how to fix this ?