In response to a helpful comment by member lassethomas, we've replaced the ####### with empty brackets [ ], which should allow entry of the desired search term(s) without having to highlight/erase anything. Let us know if there are any problems with this version.
Great job!
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know
Questions:
In Google Site Search, is it possible to limit the search to a particular sub-forum?
Are some sub-forums excluded from Google?
Kumar
Second question first: presumably Google can't see any subforum that requires a Forum login.Originally Posted by B.S.Kumar
Getting back to the first: You could experiment with modifying the "site:" string to limit it to a specific subforum. For example:
site:largeformatphotography.info/forum/forumdisplay.php?6-Cameras-amp-Camera-Accessories
...should work for the "Cameras & Camera Accessories" subforum.
Limiting the search to a sub-forum doesn't seem to work.
[Nikon] site:largeformatphotography.info/forum/forumdisplay.php?6-Cameras-amp-Camera-Accessories returns threads from all sub-forums, except those that need a login, as you noted.
The improvement is that words with less than four characters that couldn't be searched through the forum's own site search can be searched via Google:
[PS] site:largeformatphotography.info/forum or [Nik] site:largeformatphotography.info/forum
If someone can figure out how to limit Google Search to a specific sub-forum...
Kumar
I don't think you're going to be able to search specific sub-forums using Google. Anything after /forum/ in the web address is a php script. As I understand it, it's sort of a web site programming code that this web site executes in order to figure out what is to be displayed. It pulls the appropriate sections from the database to be displayed, so it's not a specific page, but rather a variable page display based on computed properties.
Google bots just click on various links at this site, and then sweep the results and record the site address which also has another php script. There's no specific reference to sub-forums there.
Repenting Sinar Blasphemer ... stonings at 11
In that case, the only advantage with Google Search is that one can search for 2 or 3 characters as shown above.
To search in a sub-forum, one must use Advanced Search and check the required forums, or go to the sub-forum and use the Search Forum tab, with the proviso that the keyword has at least 4 characters.
Kumar
You're giving the vBulletin search feature way too much credit. It truly is awful. Google is light years ahead of it in terms of usefulness.
The biggest problem is that it can't search for phrases, and that's a MAJOR problem. If you put more than one word in a vBulletin search, it will search for any instance of any of the words, and applies no algorithm to make use of the combination.
A good example of this is searching for a thread I started. I used a search for the words "easy bake". The vBulletin search gave me a complete list of useless links that made no sense. The Google search came up with the right link at the top, no problem.
Another good example is to search for "Linhof cams". Again, the vBulletin search comes up with useless nonsense links, while the Google search gives useful ones.
Repenting Sinar Blasphemer ... stonings at 11
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