WP Support Forum Search: Worthless

  • Resolved Terp

    (@xxxxxterpxxxxx)


    7 years, 3 months ago

    Why, when we do a search of the forums (both on the support page and at the top of the forum layout with the field that says “Search Forums”), does a forum search return a TON of entries not even in the forums?

    If the world ‘template’ is in there, it will return thousands of records, the majority of which are not even associated with the forums.

    https://www.ads-software.com/search/template/?forums=1

    I could see if I were typing this in the site-wide search field at the very top of the WP site, but a forum search should….well, return threads in the forum.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

  • You need to narrow your search parameters. All of the results returned are from “www.ads-software.com”. The search of a single term such as “template” will of course return all results for any topic (including the codex or any other developer oriented info) or conversation on www.ads-software.com containing only the word template. Sometimes (okay, almost always) the level of specificity in a query is directly related to the quality of the information returned.

    That being said, if you want to return only the results from https://www.ads-software.com/support/
    just use that in the search field as part of an advanced search operator – just like you would on Google if you were searching for something specific.

    Examples:

    site:www.ads-software.com/support template

    site:www.ads-software.com/support .htaccess

    site:www.ads-software.com/support cant upload images

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Clayton James.
    Thread Starter Terp

    (@xxxxxterpxxxxx)

    I was simplifying it as an example; same result with longer-tail, more specific/narrow queries:

    https://www.ads-software.com/search/Best+template+club+for+worpress/?forums=1

    Same result.

    Nonetheless, thanks for your solution! Spot-on! Why we have to manually tweak the URL and not have these search operators used when typing in the “Search Forum” field is beyond me, but I digress. ??

    Thanks again. I wrongly assumed “search forum” actually search just the forums. Rookie mistake.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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