Search is not working

Bill Siegle

Bill Siegle

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Oct 3, 2000
Messages
6,808
Title says it all :( Please fix asap. It is one of the greater reasons for me buying a membership since this site is such a good reference. Please let me know when it is fixed.
 
What did you try to search for and what happened?

If you try to search for a common word like "steel" or "knife" the poor little computer can't deal with the thousands of hits....
 
I have tried searchs for specific knives and even searched member names and get "website not responding"
 
I've tried every kind of search imaginable...and it's not working for me either. Even going to one of the sub-forums and searching within that...no dice. Seems like I've been having sporadic trouble with this for a few days now...
 
I dunno...I just did aa "advanced" search of "damascus" limited to shop talk and it worked fine for me. :confused:
 
I run searches a couple of times a day and haven't had a problem for a long time. Seems most members are not having any problem searching. I'm running Internet Explorer with all the latest updates (on WIN98se) and I have Bladeforums in my trusted zone (enabling cookies and active scripting). The search function should work with any browser (if it isn't too far obsolete) and I don't think it requires any special permissions ... but if you're using some other browser and you can't get search to work could you try Internet Explorer and see what happens? You might also try disabling any firewall you're running just for a minute to see if that enables search to work. You can certainly tell your firewall Bladeforums is a trusted site; we use cookies but don't abuse them. We don't have any popup or banner ads at all -- could an adblocker be blocking search results? I don't know.... If anything helps please post -- in fact, post even if it doesn't help.

It's difficult to figure out what's going wrong when it never happens to us. All we have to go on is the reports you guys are posting, and if all you report is "it didn't work" ...
 
I run with IE (work) and MOZILLA Firefox (home) through Norton Security and a firewall and as Cougar search several times a day without problems for a long time.

First thought is to update your Browser and like Coug said loosen up BF permissions. BF is a clean site.
 
Maybe those with problems should also write down what words / phrases they searched for. As far as I know, BF.C only lists the top 500 hits, but like Cougar said - a certain word could result in millions of hits before the top 500 are filtered out, thus causing the error.
 
Right -- and if you tell us exactly what search got you the error we can try to duplicate the problem.
 
Well I justdid a search of my own name Bill Siegle and got website not responding. Tried Tracker and it worked. Don't know why 1 works and the other doesn't. Just seems sometimes the search function works and sometimes it doesn't for me. All my settings are the same as they have been since I 1st joined BF. The only other time I have had any trouble with searching was when the function was turned off for upgrades or server problems. Anyway give it a look. Thanks
 
Just to clarify exactly what happened ... did you go to advanced search, put Bill Siegle in the search by username field and nothing in the key words field? I just tried that a few times and it works perfectly for me, every time. :confused:
 
Cougar,

I'd echo what Bill said. Sometimes it works...sometimes it doesn't. I use Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, and IE. Mostly Mozilla. It's sporadic. Like an annoying electrical problem on one's car. I almost feel like if I jump up and down, wave a flag over my head, and cluck like a chicken it'll work...if I don't, it won't.

I really can't say why. Perhaps it's my ISP. I do know, however, that I don't have the problem with other boards I visit. GlockTalk, TFL, the Board That Shall Not Be Named, etc. It's weird.

I have more of a problem with two word searches. Almost never get them to work. Maybe it's something with my system or ISP. I'll be back at work next week and play around on my really fast connection there. See what happens.

Thanks,

Lynn
 
OK, just completed some tests.

I'm using Win XP and Firefox 0.9.2 through an ISA firewall and Symantec anti virus.

I did several searches using the words:

New Zealand
and
New Zealand Damascus


Got 14 pages of stuff for the first and 4 hits for the second. This was searching the whole forum.

I also tried searching for new zealand damascus in only the automatic forum. As expected I got a page telling me there were no results.

For those of you getting intermittent results, try this.
Use the Advanced Search. Try searching a specific forum and then try searching for the same thing on the entire forum. See if this makes a difference. Also, when you're doing the advanced search check the seach options and put 1 in the "Find threads with at least 1 reply" section.
 
I'll chime in here also, Been trying since last night to do a search on a old post I was looking for, I tried it from the search button on right of the page, I tried the quick search and then went to the advanced search. All I get when I do a search is a DNS error page that says Page Not Found

I tried several different search terms today just to see if it was me or a unhandled request by the server, Does not seem to be so for either.

Just letting the powers that be know the deal :)
 
Without specifics, I can do nothing. Sorry guys, you'll need to put what you are searching for... EXACTLY
 
I just tried using the termsSpyderco liner", "Spyderco adjust", "Spyderco pivot", "Spyderco eccentric" and even "Spyderco" on IE 6 and Firefox 0.93 and on Firefox, it says, "Waiting for bladeforums.com..." and then nothing happens -- it says "Done". That is, no page loads, nothing changes -- it stays on the "search" page with the boxes filled with the search terms.

On IE, I get a "This page could not be displayed".

-j
 
Spyderco is another word that gets too many hits and overloads the search software. When I want to search for a Spyderco product I just type in the name of the model.
 
I just tried "Buck Mayo TNT" and "Buck Mayo", either in quotes or not in quotes, and I get the same thing where nothing happens.

Do I specifically need to boolean AND the terms?

Weird?

Added: If I search the titles only, it works ok.

-j
 
I'd like to add some 'specifics.'

I ran an advanced search for User name: man in all forums.
Nothing! :confused: He has over a 100 posts.

Same for my name, User name: MicMurry all forums.
No results, and I have almost a 1000!

Somethings up here.

I know several other users are having the same problem.
 
I get 500 hits for MicMurry (I suppose it's limited to 500 max). I get "invalid username" for man and same for Man, and I can't find any such user with my super moderator powers either -- are you sure that's his username?
 
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