Terrible time with this search engine!

I am having a terrible time with this search engine. It seems that after I log in and request a particular wine, all I get are current postings. I have tried to narrow down my search as to just the wine forum but of no avail. What is up?

[James Roscoe]

Jim, something is going on. I am having trouble with the entire site.

No problem here, searched "malbec". Worked good, 268 odd entries.

[Robin Garr]

Jim, something is going on. I am having trouble with the entire site.

Can you be any more specific? It seems okay from here, but what do I know?

I am having a terrible time with this search engine. It seems that after I log in and request a particular wine, all I get are current postings. I have tried to narrow down my search as to just the wine forum but of no avail. What is up?

Jim,
are you entering entire wine name (1995 Branaire Ducru, or 1994 Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon)?If so, the default on search engine is "any". So in latter case you'd end up with every mention of 1994 (or even Sauvignon Blanc for that matter). There is an "all" button, but I have found it often returns no reslts, even if I (as an experiment) copied exact phrasing from a post and searched.
While I like this site I do think the search engine is comparatively weak.

[James Roscoe]

It was freezing up on me. No problems this morning. Probably a coincidence.

No problem here, searched "malbec". Worked good, 268 odd entries.

Okay, just how "odd" were these entries??!!

[James Roscoe]

No problem here, searched "malbec". Worked good, 268 odd entries.

Okay, just how "odd" were these entries??!!

We are talking about "Doris" now.

Very good Bruce, the attitude of a prospective Malbec Hound!

Very good Bruce, the attitude of a prospective Malbec Hound!

Hey, what's with this "prospective"????? I've been drinking Malbec for about 15 or 20 years now, back when some of these hounds were still puppes!!!

Thanks for the help and comments. I'll try "all" instead of "any".

The default change from "any" to "all" did the trick. Thanks for the tip.

[Robin Garr]

The default change from "any" to "all" did the trick. Thanks for the tip.

Jim, I'm glad it worked out!

The thing to remember about this forum software is that, in contrast with the previous setup, it's not home-brewed. It has a lot of powerful features and a lot of bells and whistles that most of us love. But in contrast with Eric's forums, where we had the developer participating on the forum daily and often willing to code something new on demand if people had ideas, we're pretty much compelled to work with what we've got here.

As for the search engine, it basically draws out results by running simple text queries on the contents of the MySQL database that houses the forum posts. It's very quick, and it tends to be "foolproof" in that it returns exactly what you ask it for. But it falls well short of being a full-featured, deep database, so it's somewhat limited, and there's really not much we can do except live with that.