[Boomer]

OK. Here goes one of my shameless confessions. It is time to admit the truth. Time to bare even more of my inadequacy in front of the entire world of TOTV.

Here goes....

Sometimes I have one heckuva time doing a search on TOTV.

Now, just so you know, I am a girl who sort of, kind of, a little bit, maybe knows her way around boolean technique. I can Google 'til the cows come home. I know about keywords. Really.

But for some reason, every once in awhile, I get all bogged down when I try to do a search here.

Just now, I was looking for a recent thread. I knew the title of the thread even. I plugged it in. I told it to look for threads.

Wellll, I know for a fact that it did not look.

That search engine, or whatever it is called, lied to me. LIED TO ME!!!!

It told me it could not find any matches.

Welllll, I knew better. I knew there was a match out there. So I just showed that old search thingy. I sure did.

You see, sometimes I remember pieces of information that are most often completely useless. But in this case, that ability turned out not to be useless. For some reason, I remembered who started the thread. And so I went to that person's page and I clicked on the list of thread starts there and AHA!!!!! There was the thread.

I went through that whole rigmarole after having tried 3 different times to get it under "Search."

Now before anybody gets all into thinking that I am either a dingbat or that I am just griping, I must tell you true that Patience is not my middle name where computer stuff is concerned. So I am sure this is just me -- and my problem. But I still need help. Help!

Please, SOMEBODY PLEASE, explain to me, in succinct terms, how to do a search on TOTV. A search that works every time.

There is a treasure of information in this place. But sometimes I can find what I am looking for and sometimes I cannot.

Where oh where do I go wrong? Will somebody please point me toward the card catalogue?

Thanks.

Oh, and here is a little song that came to mind while I was writing this plea for mercy. I sometimes think in old song lyrics. I know. It's weird. But I do. And this song came to mind. And I bet most of you remember it. Even though we were in the fetal stage at the time......Yeah, right....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nTbEJ1SYN4

Boomer

[ijusluvit]

Your post is hilarious. I imagine that if you did this as a standup routine at a Crispers meeting there'd be some folks rolling in the aisles.

The truth is, I am pretty good googler also, and I have similar problems finding things in TOTV. (The difference however, is that I'm a guy. I guess I'm not real good at asking for directions. Glad you did, so now I can just sit here and wait for all the answers to be posted.)

[Whalen]

I also consider myself a Google Queen, I even have a crown, and I too have trouble a searchin' TOTV.

[Boomer]

Whalen! ijusluvit!

I thought I was all alone. I feel so much better.

But I have to log off now because, as I have said many times, I must never allow myself to type after midnight. Who knows what kind of shameless confessions I might put up here on this screen for all to see -- once the clock strikes twelve. Last week I told anybody who was bored enough to look all about our quiet, quieter, quietest, geezer-like New Year's Eve.

Hey, this may be some kind of catharsis. (I never liked that word,) Ahhhh, the truth will set us free. And maybe somebody will help us.

Boomer

[midstatepc]

I use google. I've found that search engines from different sites / forum packages can have varying levels of success. It's just a me thing.

{search item} site:{domain name without the "www."}

[tony]

I follow what Ted from MidState PC says.

Use Google.com for a site-specific search

You must tell Google what site with the term
site:
followed by a space

Then you must tell Google what to search for with your search terms

An example:

Select the following and copy it.
Then paste it in a Google.com search

site:talkofthevillages.com shops in Spanish Springs and Sumter Landing

You are asking Google
Search TalkOfTheVillage.com

for
shops AND Spanish AND Springs AND Sumter AND Landing all in the same web page.

Google assumes AND when you just leave a space. Therefore it ignored the "and" in lower case and I entered in the search string.

Google finds 61 pages on talkofthevillages.com with all those words in it.

Another example. Use the same search terms, but add single quotation marks around Spanish Springs and around Sumter Landing.

site:talkofthevillages.com shops in 'Spanish Springs' and 'Sumter Landing'

Google finds 51 ToTV pages that matches. See how it limited your search results by ten pages?

Try it, but if you learn something more on searching, you are duty-bound to come back to this thread and tell us about it.

[Russ_Boston]

I learn something new everyday and that was it. Thanks Tony!

PS. I have never had a problem with the core TOTV search but I must admit that I don't use it much.

[tony]

Glad I could help, Russ.

You taught me about HTML headers and helping with Google search.

[golfnut]

Tony, are you saying not to use the search option on the TOTV site??

[tony]

No. no. Use the search here. But some were having problems with it and I wanted to give alternative.

I talked with other people here privately who rave about the search here. I have had success and failure both.

I just want people to be able to find stuff.

[ijusluvit]

Originally Posted by tony

...I just want people to be able to find stuff.

Ever the gracious host! Thanks Tony.