Please can we have a proper forum supported by a proper BBS engine so that searches postings images etc etc etc can all be easily managed and not this clunky pathetic attempt at a forum.

http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums

And then enter the word you are looking
for.

I entered Rust, and as David says, the
list can be long, in this case at least 100 forum entries

I then tried EW Lathe and was given 10.

So if you are looking for something not
that common you may find this useful.

If you look at Google’s Cached pages,
rather that the forum page direct, the word will even be highlighted.

Of course, if the item being searched
is very recent Google may not yet have found it.

On my PC the Advanced search facility
only becomes available after first doing a web wide search, but that
can be ignored.

I use this method to search my MEW
index on the web that runs to about 100 pages. I again searched for
EW lathe and it came up once in the lathe reviews pages.

The index is at
http://www.homews-mew-index.co.uk

Harold

Come on David

The forum is impossible to search, which puts it in a league of its own. I know there are postings in there I want to find but short of spending hours randomly and fruitlessly diving in and out of likely-looking threads, there's no way of finding them. I can't even search by author. I challenge you to find a posting unless you already know exactly where to look for it.

If the search returns too many results, then the normal reaction is to make the search more specific. That's how they work and therein lies the power of the search tool.

Would there be any harm in having the search facility available? If it's really that useless we could always not use it. It would be nice to have the choice.

Please enable the search function and let us decide whether to use it or not. It could only improve our experience of the forums.

Pretty please?

Murray

Your 2 posts before tonite

Pehaps it would help if people would use sensible titles for their topics that describe the content. On lots of forums it bugs me no end that people use topics like "Help", "Urgent. Noobie needs help" etc. On moderated forums and groups the admin will sit on one of these for a couple of days and still let it through. Daft. At least on here David will help by improving a title when asked so the search engine will find it one day.

Even the more experienced will still ask for information having not bothered to use google at all or expect people to use telepathy to identify their lathe and what the problem really is from their garbled description.

I made a posting about a Hudswell Clark Diesel Shunter D604 – googled for more info on this engine the next day and got my posting!

Neil

Unfortunately things won't change anytime soon. If you are not willing to use Google then maybe think again as entering "search" brings up 10,600 results on the forum rather than your rather low 35.

David Clark is ex Editor of ME and MEW mags

I seem to remember David was instrumental in getting the google search box limited to this web site installed on the home screen, google has a powerful set of Boolean and other tools to focus a search. If you are averse to google that is of course your choice. There are few places you can go on the Internet where they are not collecting something about you and now Siri, Alexa etc. Are certainly listening.

Mike

My apologies to Neil, I should not try and use my memory.

Mike