Is the Search function messed up?

[The Deacon]

Tried a couple (Advanced) searchs. All I get is a blank page. No error message, or anything else, just a empty browser window with "Done" in the status bar.

Looking for theads in the Spyderco Forum, more than a year old, containing posts by myself, containing the word "custom".

Tried a couple others also I know should bring back a couple "hits". Got the same result with them also...

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/search.php?do=process

 

[Cougar Allen]

It works if you coddle it. Please read Sticky: Search Engine FAQs & Tips

You'll have to do it without the keyword "custom" -- or if you can't do without that word you can try Google Advanced Search with Bladeforums in the domain field.

 

[The Deacon]

Thanks for the response Couger, but...

If I do a search on "knife" with no other criteria, I get a page saying the search returned too many results. (which I expected)

If I do a search on "kqzfmxyyppd", I get a page saying no matches were found. (again, expected behavior)

If I do an advanced search on just my User Name, in the Spyderco forum, over a year ago, I get back over 15 pages of results, with no easy way to find the one I'm looking for.

But, when I do the advanced search I mentioned in my first post, all I get is an absolutely blank white page. THAT is what I was reporting and what I have a hard time believing is "expected behavior" of the software.

Since there obviously could not be more posts by me in the Spyderco forum that include the word "custom" than total posts by me there, the search should not be causing the system to choke and puke. In theory at least, it should either return URLs for one or more threads, or a "no results found" page.

For what it's worth,

If I do the Google search, it returns results with my user name anywhere on the page, and the word custom anywhere on the page, again too many results to sort through.

 

[Cougar Allen]

The way the vBulletin search function works adding more search terms does not stop it overloading. That's the way it would have worked with the search routines I used to write in primitive Basic, but modern search functions work a different way (and the ones I used to write in Basic would take centuries to search the Bladeforums database). If "custom" causes an overload it will cause an overload no matter search terms you add -- the function still has to look at all files containing "custom" and can't do it. Currently overloads give you a blank page and no error message.

Restricting the search to titles only can avoid an overload, and sometimes restricting it to one forum will work, but adding more keywords doesn't help.

If you think about it you can probably find some combination of keywords that will find what you're looking for either here or at google, but often you have to do some real thinking. It would be nice if that weren't necessary, but ...