How to Search These Boards

[waysoftheearth]

I've noticed that a few people have commented on how hard it is to "find stuff" on these boards.

Yes, ProBoards' built in search features are pretty lame, but fear not. There's a much better way.

Open a web browser and visit www.google.com/ .

Type in a search term as usual. E.g., if you are searching for something about Elves changing class then you might type Elves changing class. Then type this extra bit after your search term(s) site:odd74.proboards.com .

So your whole search term might end up looking something like this:

Elves changing class site:odd74.proboards.com .

This will ask Google to search only these boards (rather than the entire internet) for whatever you are looking for.

Hit enter, and hey presto, you've just Google-searched these boards for what ever you were after ;D

[coffee]

That's awesome! I didn't know you could do that (my Google-fu is weak, obviously).

Have an exalt for this!

[foxroe]

Geez Louise! I've used that feature so many darn times searching other sites, but it never occured to me to use it on pro-boards. I absolutely hate it when pro-boards ignores search terms that it considers "common"!

Exalt! ;D

[eris]

Oct 20, 2011 12:23:54 GMT -6 foxroe said:

Geez Louise! I've used that feature so many darn times searching other sites, but it never occured to me to use it on pro-boards. I absolutely hate it when pro-boards ignores search terms that it considers "common"!

Exalt! ;D

I had exactly the same reaction! Have another Exalt!

[waysoftheearth]

Thanks guys!

I'm happy to have helped out ;D

[DungeonDevil]

I found that you have to specify the timeframe, expanding it if necessary. That seems to word a lot for me.

[3d6]

Yes, awesome. Good suggestion. A little twist on this, which is less specific, but a little less to type -

In addition to the "site" function, another option is the "inurl" function, which can be often "good enough" (searches for pages with expression in the url).

Example: Entering in Google:

inurl:odd74 oil

will search for keyword "oil" in sites with odd74 in the url (which will give _mostly_ results from this site, but also others which happen to have odd74 in the url).

Edit: you can put the "oil," or whatever, in front of the inurl:odd74, or after, but order does make a difference to google, searching

oil inurl:odd74

is not (quite) the same as

inurl:odd74 oil

[Finarvyn]

I may move this to the "resources" section. This is good stuff!

[Zenopus]

I've often been frustrated by the odd74 forums search engine. It works much less well than searching the Acaeum or Dragonsfoot forums. So this is due to it being a "ProBoards"?

I, too, usually search Google to find old threads. I can usually find what you are looking for just by using "odd74.proboards.com" (in quotes) plus whatever search terms I am using. The only problem is that sometimes it brings up a thread that has no formatting. For example, see this:

odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tolkien&action=print&thread=5854

I don't like to link to threads in that format. But I just tried waysoftheearth's suggestion of using "site:http://odd74.proboards.com", and this pulled up the real thread very quickly:

odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tolkien&action=display&thread=5854

So, exalt!

(This also lead me to realize that all I needed to do to fix the first link was change "print" to "display").

[giantbat]

The protocol and attendant syntax are unnecessary; site:odd74.proboards.com is sufficient.