How to confine search to a specific forum

[John Kaufmann]

I have a problem with a KM C280 making a grinding noise on startup, so tried to search in that forum on "grinding", but the search goes over the whole site. I also tried adding "bizhub" to reduce the hits to the KM forum, but the search just seems to take the union of the two search terms rather than the intersection, even if I use "+" (as in "bizhub +grinding" or "+bizhub +grinding"). "Advanced" search seems to offer no way to do this. How can I refine the search?

[Hansoon]

Re: How to confine search to a specific forum

Forget about the search function in this panel.

One of our colleagues here once posted following link as an alternative to search in Copytechnet:

301 Moved Permanently

Works well.

Hans

[Iowatech]

Re: How to confine search to a specific forum

Yeah, with all due respect to Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently", I consider the standard search here as more of a "Zen Search": while it might not take you where you want to go, it will sometimes take you where you need to go. But not often enough if you are in a hurry.
I use the same search Hansoon does, and it is a lot better than the standard search here. Also, it is built on the Google search framework, so you can use standard Google search qualifiers if you want.

[John Kaufmann]

Re: How to confine search to a specific forum

Forget about the search function in this panel.

One of our colleagues here once posted following link as an alternative to search in Copytechnet:

301 Moved Permanently

Works well.

Thank you, Hans - and please accept my apology for the delay in this reply. [In a hurry to leave last Wednesday, my computer was forgotten.] Our colleague at commercebusinesssystems.co.uk provides a CGI script to pass the search text to google.co.uk, with the sitesearch variable set to "copytechnet.com" if the checkbox is checked (the script default). Actually, that is essentially the approach I have been using (appending " site:copytechnet.com" to the search terms), using google.com instead of google.co.uk (though they give the same results).

And that approach mostly works, because users of this site have the discipline to confine most bizhub questions to the Konica Minolta forum. I had just hoped/thought/expected(?) that this content-rich site would have a more productive internal search mechanism. Thanks for saving me (and, with luck, others) a lot of time trying to dope out the copytechnet.com search engine.

[BTW, I learned another quirk while composing this reply: I was interrupted for an hour in the middle of the reply, and when I came back found that "Auto-Save" (which happens twice a minute?) has a severe limitation: It gets flushed when you are automatically logged out for inactivity. Oh well... ]

[John Kaufmann]

Re: How to confine search to a specific forum

Yeah, with all due respect to Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently", I consider the standard search here as more of a "Zen Search": while it might not take you where you want to go, it will sometimes take you where you need to go. But not often enough if you are in a hurry.

! I feel illiterate not to have known the Dirk Gently reference, and thank you for improving my classics education. I love Wikipedia's description:

Dirk Gently operates his Holistic Detective Agency based on the "fundamental interconnectedness of all things", which relies on random chance methods to uncover connections between seemingly-unrelated cases. He claims that he follows the principles of quantum mechanics, and although the majority of his clients suspect he may be a conman he often produces surprising results.

You could not have picked a better summary. (Did you write it? )

I use the same search Hansoon does, and it is a lot better than the standard search here. Also, it is built on the Google search framework, so you can use standard Google search qualifiers if you want.

Yeah, I've been using that search too (without the intermediate script), for the same reasons. I just assumed this good site would have a good search engine, that was just beyond my ken. It's a mixed blessing to know that I'm not quite so dumb.

[Tricky]

Re: How to confine search to a specific forum

http://www.copytechnet.com/forums/rants-raves-and-everything-else/69562-search-engine-crap.html

This script will do a Google search on this site.

Create a new text document with notepad and save the following code as search copytechnet or whatever you want but the file extension has to be .bat

When run a command prompt pops up and you type your search terms, press enter and Firefox or Internet Explorer opens with the Google results, it saves you having to type the following into Google each time "site:http://www.copytechnet.com/forums/canon/"

It searches the canon subforum but can be modified to any sub forum, just alter the red text and change it to what you see in the address bar of your web browser. For example if you wanted to search the Ricoh forum put ricoh-savin-gestetner instead of canon.

The blue text can be changed to whatever you want.

Enjoy

@echo off
set "google=http://www.google.com/search?q="
set "site=+site:http%%3A%%2F%%2Fwww.copytechnet.com%%2Fforums%%2F[COLOR=#ff0000]canon[/COLOR]%%2F"

set /p "string=[COLOR=#0000ff]Search Copytechnet canon for[/COLOR] [COLOR=#0000ff]:[/COLOR] "
set "string=%string: =+%"

start "" %google%%string%%site%

If this isn't worth a rep or like i dont know what is.

Personally I have three of these, Canon Kyocera and Ricoh, it saves having to alter the script each time.

[John Kaufmann]

Re: How to confine search to a specific forum

...
set "site=+site:http%%3A%%2F%%2Fwww.copytechnet.com%%2 Fforums%%2Fcanon%%2F"
...

Ah, of course: That's a good refinement on what others have said: google with the "site:copytechnet.com" parameter, but extended into the forum level. Regardless how you choose to automate/script it, that is the key to refining the search (though I have found that my questions for Konica Minolta almost always hit in that forum anyway). Thanks.