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Search function is inadequate.


Paul Carmody
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I haven’t in the past complained about the new forum ,and there is concern for losing the old forum.The search function here is completely inadequate.You get everything but what you ask for.I even try to simplify it like 12” Emerson and still get the same thing and everything other than what was requested. Sorry for the vent but…Oh well! Life goes on.

Edited by Paul Carmody
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There is an option for all of the words or any of the words. It will narrow it down, I think it defaults to any...

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Correct. The search options do NOT function! The search is complete garbage on this new site.... I'd almost hoped it would be fixed. Somehow doubt that that is going to happen. 

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The new website,like the rest of the organization, was created by volunteers who devote a lot  of their time and energy to this endeavor free of charge for your benefit. I would be careful critiquing the club or you may not have one at all. If you use the AFCA website and have a suggestion I would certainly put it in a positive light. The club is made up of volunteers. If you use it perhaps you can volunteer your time and skills as well.

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I would recommend entering your search in Google, and add:   +AFCA

This should return results that include mentions of AFCA, usually hits in the form of forum comments, both on this and the old forum. 

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11 minutes ago, Steve Cunningham said:

Try putting your search terms in quotation marks.

That doesn't help! I've tried that since day 1. 😬

Edited by Paul Michael
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  • Paul Carmody changed the title to Search function is inadequate.
Posted (edited)
7 hours ago, Jim Henderson said:

The new website,like the rest of the organization, was created by volunteers who devote a lot  of their time and energy to this endeavor free of charge for your benefit. I would be careful critiquing the club or you may not have one at all. If you use the AFCA website and have a suggestion I would certainly put it in a positive light. The club is made up of volunteers. If you use it perhaps you can volunteer your time and skills as well.

I understand this fully.And I fully appreciate the time and effort volunteers put in.And I will be honest and say that I will not now or ever volunteer to do any website work but will continue to pay my dues.Bring me your fan,car , or mechanical,  and I will help fix or paint.I am not able, into, or desire to learn working on computer related anything.Putting that aside ,when I was looking for information on two newly aquired fans I could not find anything .The old site is down again.I have been saying since this site opened that we need more content  and member partisipaton as far as fan information goes.It does little good if it can not be found.

Where is everyone that use to post on the old forum by the way.Does Facebook get a lot of activity? 

It is not my intention to offend ,just an observation.The world the way it is, a search  function about fans is of little consequence I suppose.I changed the title but the fact remains the same.

This is the first and last time I will critique anything related to AFCA as it is not ever taken well and you cannot in print know the spirt in which it was delivered.Back to work on the GE.

Edited by Paul Carmody
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On 8/24/2023 at 4:20 PM, Paul Carmody said:

I understand this fully.And I fully appreciate the time and effort volunteers put in.And I will be honest and say that I will not now or ever volunteer to do any website work but will continue to pay my dues.Bring me your fan,car , or mechanical,  and I will help fix or paint.I am not able, into, or desire to learn working on computer related anything.Putting that aside ,when I was looking for information on two newly aquired fans I could not find anything .The old site is down again.I have been saying since this site opened that we need more content  and member partisipaton as far as fan information goes.It does little good if it can not be found.

Where is everyone that use to post on the old forum by the way.Does Facebook get a lot of activity? 

It is not my intention to offend ,just an observation.The world the way it is, a search  function about fans is of little consequence I suppose.I changed the title but the fact remains the same.

This is the first and last time I will critique anything related to AFCA as it is not ever taken well and you cannot in print know the spirt in which it was delivered.Back to work on the GE.

I know nothing about the back end of websites, but if there is difficulty with search on the new forum now, how useful will it be integrating the old forum content? And how will that info be accessed if not easily searchable?

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Hello Paul & other friends, I will agree, the search function is trash, Jamie will agree too. It is probably the weakest link in what has otherwise been a good software. I hope as does everyone else that this will be improved with future upgrades.

Regarding the old website, it has not been supported by the creators of the software in a number of years. That leaves it very open to attacks & there isn't a whole lot we can do about it. It cannot easily be integrated over to the new software. There is currently a group being led by Lane Shirey who plans to try to copy everything into an archive. This is going to be a long tedious process, but I am very grateful to all who have volunteered to help.

Please don't get discouraged, it is all a work in progress. Unfortunately the legitimate job has me working 12 hour days right now & really keeps getting in the way of the volunteer job. We hear you & do appreciate your input & patience.

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18 hours ago, Roger Borg said:

I know nothing about the back end of websites, but if there is difficulty with search on the new forum now, how useful will it be integrating the old forum content? And how will that info be accessed if not easily searchable?

The first task of the volunteer group is to try to get our arms around HOW to do the data transfer.  As I understand, there will be Wikipedia created in the new forum to park that old forum content. The contents will be sorted by brand and placed in the wiki. That should help finding stuff. 

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Thanks Lane and Stan for taking the time to explain what’s going to be going on with the old posts etc. I truly appreciate the tone being set and particularly all those who are volunteering on top of other commitments. Thank you all!

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On 8/24/2023 at 9:39 AM, Jim Henderson said:

The new website,like the rest of the organization, was created by volunteers who devote a lot  of their time and energy to this endeavor free of charge for your benefit. I would be careful critiquing the club or you may not have one at all. If you use the AFCA website and have a suggestion I would certainly put it in a positive light. The club is made up of volunteers. If you use it perhaps you can volunteer your time and skills as well.

The search function is a part of the hosting website and not due to any fault of the volunteers who contributed.

And just what is the cost of the website?

 

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I posted this in another area previously, but this may help your searching: 

So far, I have had very little luck with the search functions available with this forum software. As far as I can tell, currently, you have to have more than 3 letters in your search criteria to be able to do a general search for anything, although, I have been able to do a general Member search with less than 4 letters when looking for a specific Member or Guest name. I have read that it has something to do with the way our MySQL database is formatted, and the load it places on the server. Also, I have been unable to search by City or State/Province in the advanced search section. We may just need to wait for an update to the software in order to get these "bugs" fixed.

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On 9/2/2023 at 4:07 AM, Jamie Horner said:

Again, the website and the forum are different entities (I know some day everyone will understand this). Website URL: https://antiquefancollectors.com/. Forum URL: https://new.afcaforum.com/. There is no search function on the website. The less than adequate search function is on the forum. 

image.gif.9f4474f1b71944470ac00b4aa41253a7.gif

Jamie, I think the name “the AFCA website “ has become slang for the forum to differentiate it from the AFCA FB page.  Some view the FB page as a FB forum of sorts. 
 

It’s kinda like people being accepted onto the FB page and they immediately think they’re AFCA members. Same is true with the “guest” status on the forum. They think they’re members and can’t understand why their privileges are limited. 

Edited by Lane Shirey
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I use the search function from time to time, and I must say, it has improved tremendously. Maybe it has to do with the new forum just does not have the sheer volume of information to search that the old forum did.

Edited by Mark Olson
did not "sound" just right
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On 9/2/2023 at 3:20 AM, Jamie Horner said:

I posted this in another area previously, but this may help your searching: 

So far, I have had very little luck with the search functions available with this forum software. As far as I can tell, currently, you have to have more than 3 letters in your search criteria to be able to do a general search for anything, although, I have been able to do a general Member search with less than 4 letters when looking for a specific Member or Guest name. I have read that it has something to do with the way our MySQL database is formatted, and the load it places on the server. Also, I have been unable to search by City or State/Province in the advanced search section. We may just need to wait for an update to the software in order to get these "bugs" fixed.

 Thank you Jamie for the update. I have not been able to get results using the search option on this forum either I figured it was because I was not a member. Bad me for not joining years ago. I dropped the dime a while back and still have had no luck searching on this forum. No worries. My IT guy even tried to make sure I was not having a senior moment since I use other forums relating to antiques as all are essential for my Antique restoration business. I love this club and enjoy the content. The volunteers/members are great, and there is absolutely no reason for any one member to remind other members of that fact. It is a club with good people. As many may already know, the best way at this point to search the AFCA forum for topics if all else fails is to do a Google search. In most cases the search will result in many options directing straight to AFCA related post years past and present. I have done this for many many years and have never been disappointed. Or, you can wait for a software fix. But, life is too short and I need to get fans done so others can enjoy a fine antique fan too.        

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