Use Google to search the forum.

[sandbender]

"...Could you help a little with how to do this please..."

Some folks have complained about the built in forum search facility not working as well as they would like. Here is a possible fix. It is a little tricky for the non technical, however you only have to set it up once and you will be able to use this to search any web site, not just the BCUK forum.

I am using the Google Chrome web browser, it should work fine in other browsers.

Open up a web page, in this case I am using the Google search page.

Add a bookmark to the bookmark bar (the word google indicates the presence of the new bookmark).

Right click (or ctrl click) the new bookmark to bring up some menu options, click 'Edit'.

A window appears showing the properties for the bookmark.

I have replaced the name 'Google' with the words 'Search this Site', you can name it whatever you want, STS, SEARCH or whatever.

I then replace the URL with the following text.

javascript:Qr=prompt('Search%20Site%20for','');if(Qr)location.href='http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:'+encodeURIComponent(window.location.hostname)+'+'+escape(Qr)

Click 'Save' and then navigate to a website that you plan to search, in this case 'BushcraftUK'. Then click your new search bookmark.

A window appears into which you can type your search terms.

I am searching for the word 'Mors'.

My search results.

----------------------


If you wish to exclude some search terms, type them into the search box with a - directly in front of them, they will then be excluded from the search.

Thus...

searching for 'cheddar' brings up a surprisingly large number of cheesy hits on the forum.

searching for 'cheddar stilton' brings up even more cheesy threads.

searching for 'cheddar -stilton' brings up only the cheddar related threads that do not also refer to stilton.

There some other tweaks available, more here.

Happy searching.

 

[Retired Member southey]

hmmm cant seem to get the correct menus up in order to use the URL on firefox,

 

[sandbender]

hmmm cant seem to get the correct menus up in order to use the URL on firefox,

I think in Firefox you need to right click and then click 'properties' to be able to change the URL.

 

[negtneg]

or, for quick one off searches just type this into the google search bar

site:bushcraftuk.com <search terms here>

Simon

 

[sandbender]

or, for quick one off searches just type this into the google search bar

site:bushcraftuk.com <search terms here>

Simon

That does bring up a different set of results though, I have no idea which system provides the best results.

 

[Retired Member southey]

As far as I can see from trying to set up the search thing on fire fox using my normal user level of skill is that I cant,

 

[spandit]

I made a BCUK search plugin for Firefox if anyone is interested

 

[Adze]

As far as I can see from trying to set up the search thing on fire fox using my normal user level of skill is that I cant,

It does work with firefox, but if you just copy the string from the original post it'll likely fail as the forum appears to have added some spaces - i.e. "locatio n" should read "location", "%2 0" should read "%20" and "compo nent" should read "component"

Fix those and it should work nicely.

 

[Adze]

Step by step instructions for Firefox:

1.) Open Firefox, go to BCUK and open this thread.

2.) On the menu bar at the top, click View, put the mouse pointer over Toolbars and make sure there is a tick in the box for Bookmarks Toolbar.

3.) Select the javascript string (the bold text in post one of this thread) with the mouse and copy it to the clipboard (either press CTRL + C on the keyboard or right click the text while it's selected and choose Copy from the context menu)

4.) Create a new bookmark by right clicking the bookmarks toolbar (it'll probably still have "Most Visited" and "Getting Started" links on it if you're not sure what it is) and choosing "New Bookmark" from the context menu

5.) Type a name for the bookmark - e.g. search this site - into the Name field and then paste the javascript string into the Location field. Make sure the three additional spaces (one in "locatio n", one in "%2 0" and the last in "compo nent") have been removed from the javascript string, then click the OK button.

Cheers!

 

[bronskimac]

There are a few add ons for Firefox that do the trick. This one I have tried out and it seams to work https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/site-search/eula/143577?src=search

For Opera (someone else must be using it!) this extension plays nice, InSite Search https://addons.opera.com/en-gb/extensions/details/insite-search/?display=en

Not sure about IE I haven't used it for quite a while.

 

[Wayland]

I made a BCUK search plugin for Firefox if anyone is interested

That does sound interesting...

 

[ged]

As far as I can see from trying to set up the search thing on fire fox using my normal user level of skill is that I cant,

All you have to do is add the text "site:bushcraftuk.com" at the end of the search text that you give to any search engine. For example I might type

search engine site:bushcraftuk.com

in Google's search box to search just this forum.

It really doesn't need to be complicated.

 

[sandbender]

All you have to do is add the text "site:bushcraftuk.com" at the end of the search text that you give to any search engine. For example I might type

search engine site:bushcraftuk.com

in Google's search box to search just this forum.

It really doesn't need to be complicated.

See post 5.

 

[andybysea]

you lost me after the ''some folks'' bit.

 

[spandit]

That does sound interesting...

It's the same as people have discussed here, just modifying the normal search plugin

 

[Adze]

I really like Sandbender's javascript+bookmark search - it's more elegant than adding site:URL to your search terms, considerably faster too.

A fair point would be that it's Google-centric, but be honest, when was the last time you used Altavista or Lycos? Even Bing and Yahoo have such triflingly small shares in the search market as to be practically a rounding error.

If you add up all the search engine traffic which isn't Google's, the total is less than a quarter of that which Google handles.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-ww-monthly-201106-201206