Search results in blank screen

SBranson

SBranson

Joined
Oct 29, 2006
Messages
2,912
It's quite common for me to encounter a blank white screen when trying to use the search function. It I retry then I get the wait 60 secs message. I wait then get the white screen again.
I assume it's a result of the the server being busy or is it because I have a Mac computer?

This was a large part of the reason to upgrade to a Gold Membership. It's quite annoying.

I just tried about 5 times in the Exchange section and everytime a blank screen.:mad:
 
As stated in the sticky a couple of threads above this one here, you're most likely using search terms that are too common, which overloads the search engine for BF.
 
It does depend on "what" you are searching for.

If you are looking for a "Black Serrated Fixed Blade"
you might want to broaden the search to "black fixed" or "black blade"

I find if I'm too precise on what I'm searching for, you get the blank screen
which is the search timing out and giving up on you.

good luck

mike
 
As a suggestion, you can use Google to search a specific site, and it almost always does a better job than the site's search facility.

For example, you could search for "Black Serrated Fixed Blade site:bladeforums.com" and find what you are looking for.

Another comparison - searching for "knife" using the bladeforums.com search engine versus Google. This is not something the forum software does well, and it will return the error message "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms. The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search : knife."

If you do the same search in Google using the syntax "knife site:bladeforums.com", it will return approximately 204,000 entries in less than a second. Doing short word or common word searches with Google will off-load those searches from the forum hardware, leaving it to do much more useful searches like "monkey dance pirate cove."
 
It is sad that the only post that turns up if you search "monkey dance pirate cove" is this one. I had great hopes for that query.
 
I don't think it's a matter of too broad a topic as I tend to be entering certain makers names or very specific knives so maybe it's too precise.
(PS I did consult the FAQ's before posting this)

Thanks Gabe, I will try your suggestions for my searches and leave this server alone. :)
 
:thumbup: Excellent results... thanks again Gabe for the tip. Worked perfectly and took me exactly to the thread I was looking for.
 
Well I was looking for "sebenza" but just in "for sale forum" and got the same blank page :(
 
That's one of the times the internal search engine's quirks are annoying.... If you set that to "search titles only" it'll work.
 
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