SEARCH Feature Never Works?

[JoeyO]

Help. I’ve been a member of this forum for a long time and I can never get the search feature to work correctly.

For example, I want to search for the keyword “steering” in the body of all posts inside the X3 (G45) forum. So I open up the Search Forum feature. I type in the keyword “steering”. I pull down the menu titled “Search In Forum(s)” and lo and behold X3 (G45) forum is missing from that list. In fact, not one X-vehcile is listed in the list. WTF? The X3 and X5 models are BMW’s biggest selling vehicles, and they’re not acknowledged as legitimate forums to search? It just makes no sense.

I often recall seeing an old post for a particular topic, and I don’t want to start a new post, but often I’m forced to do so, because I can never find the old post. It’s all very frustrating. So what am I doing wrong with the search engine?

[JoeyO]

So what I described above is for the Advanced Search. It stinks.

Just for the heck of it, in the X3 (G45) forum, I tried the more simplified search engine named “Search This Forum” and entered “steering”. Unfortunately it output “Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.” Really? Not one person inside the X3 (G45) typed the word “Steering”?? That’s hard to believe. Again, the whole experience is totally frustrating.

[vreihen16]

Many folks use Google for forum searches, where you can add on "site:g45.bimmerpost.com" to your search query to limit results to the G45 section of BP:




.

[apptest]

Originally Posted by JoeyO

Help. I’ve been a member of this forum for a long time and I can never get the search feature to work correctly.

For example, I want to search for the keyword “steering” in the body of all posts inside the X3 (G45) forum. So I open up the Search Forum feature. I type in the keyword “steering”. I pull down the menu titled “Search In Forum(s)” and lo and behold X3 (G45) forum is missing from that list. In fact, not one X-vehcile is listed in the list. WTF? The X3 and X5 models are BMW’s biggest selling vehicles, and they’re not acknowledged as legitimate forums to search? It just makes no sense.

I often recall seeing an old post for a particular topic, and I don’t want to start a new post, but often I’m forced to do so, because I can never find the old post. It’s all very frustrating. So what am I doing wrong with the search engine?

Agree with comments that search isn’t great. Using google can be pretty good. I’ve also built a whole new search which in my own use is pretty good. You can access it from the homepage in the search bar, and just switch it to forum. The one on the news page is a general forum search and will search everything so you will have to put some keywords like g45 to try to filter it a bit more.

If you go to the beta sites you can use the more scalpel like version of the search and filter by posts etc. There’s no beta version of the g45 site yet but I’m going to get one together this week sometime I believe. You can in the meantime try searching from the homepage and see if that helps you in any way or if you get any better kind of results?

I am looking to trailer the new search engine more so feedback would be great

You can also launch the beta search from any of the beta sites (example https://g80.bimmerpost.com/beta and just make sure to indicate the ‘global’ flag when the search occurs so it knows to search outside of the g80 forum

[JoeyO]

Originally Posted by apptest

Agree with comments that search isn’t great. Using google can be pretty good. I’ve also built a whole new search which in my own use is pretty good. You can access it from the homepage in the search bar, and just switch it to forum.

What search in the homepage? I don’t see any. By the way, the link in your post didn’t work. I got a Error 404 Page not found.

[JoeyO]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

Many folks use Google for forum searches, where you can add on "site:g45.bimmerpost.com" to your search query to limit results to the G45 section of BP:

Thanks. I didn’t know about the “site:g45.bimmerpost.com“.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by JoeyO

What search in the homepage? I don’t see any. By the way, the link in your post didn’t work. I got a Error 404 Page not found.

The link had a hidden ")" at the end. Here's the correct link for the beta site:

https://www.bimmerpost.com/beta/

[apptest]

ok JoeyO the g45 beta site is now live (incuding site search). Try it out and see if the search is improved for you). I have advanced search in the works and should hopefully come out in the next few days, but you can try it ahead of time as well.

https://g45.bimmerpost.com/beta
https://g45.bimmerpost.com/beta/search.php

[JoeyO]

Originally Posted by apptest

ok JoeyO the g45 beta site is now live (incuding site search). Try it out and see if the search is improved for you). I have advanced search in the works and should hopefully come out in the next few days, but you can try it ahead of time as well.

https://g45.bimmerpost.com/beta
https://g45.bimmerpost.com/beta/search.php

Thanks. I’m not familiar with the Beta version. Other than its color scheme, it doesn’t seem much different. What are some improvements?

Regarding the regular SEARCH, it acts a little weird. It has no reaction to me hitting “return” or “enter” on my keyboard. It does nothing. Also, it creates a pull down menu for its results, but I can’t scroll all the way down, because my keyboard is blocking it (using an iPad). What’s good is it searches only the X3 (G45) forum and that is a good thing. Lastly, the SEARCH button about 5 lines down the screen is completely dead. I clicked it an nothing happens.

Regarding the ADVANCED SEARCH, I don’t like it, because it searches and gives me results from all the forums. I wish it just searched the X3 (G45) forum. I’m sure most forum members are like me, and only care about searching the model they own.

[apptest]

Originally Posted by JoeyO

Thanks. I’m not familiar with the Beta version. Other than its color scheme, it doesn’t seem much different. What are some improvements?

Regarding the regular SEARCH, it acts a little weird. It has no reaction to me hitting “return” or “enter” on my keyboard. It does nothing. Also, it creates a pull down menu for its results, but I can’t scroll all the way down, because my keyboard is blocking it (using an iPad). What’s good is it searches only the X3 (G45) forum and that is a good thing. Lastly, the SEARCH button about 5 lines down the screen is completely dead. I clicked it an nothing happens.

Regarding the ADVANCED SEARCH, I don’t like it, because it searches and gives me results from all the forums. I wish it just searched the X3 (G45) forum. I’m sure most forum members are like me, and only care about searching the model they own.

I’m going to keep working on the functionality for iPad and iPhone, right now it’s engineered for desktop. On an iPad I’m not sure you should be pressing enter for anything, you should be tapping on the search result to goto that particular thread. I’ll look into the unresponsive clicks on items.
Advanced search is a beta of a beta, so I guess an alpha? It still needs work for the forum based filtering like the drop down has, but it’s coming.

What I’m most concerned with is the quality of the results. That’s what I’m actively tuning— if you had any thoughts on that. If you need more time of course that’s fair enough

[JoeyO]

Apptest, regarding quality of results, when the regular search engine searched the X3 (G45) forum, the results seemed pretty good. For example, I searched for the keyword STEERING, and the results it outputted seemed legit and did pertain to topics of steering for the X3 G45) vehicle. Although, the quantity of outputs seems somewhat light. I expected more treads to contain the word STEERING in them.

I only did that one example. I’ll try some more different examples.

[vreihen16]

Did you compare the "steering" search results from the beta site to the ones from Google using the site filter that I posted above? Just curious from a sanity check perspective of the beta search, since you said that the results seemed lighter than expected.....

[apptest]

Originally Posted by JoeyO

Regarding quality of results, when the regular search engine searched the X3 (G45) forum, the results seemed pretty good. For example, I searched for the keyword STEERING, and the results it outputted seemed legit and did pertain to topics of steering for the X3 G45) vehicle.

I only did that one example. I’ll try some more different examples.

It should now do a much better job of supporting the iPad

[apptest]

Advanced search is now live!

[JoeyO]

Apptest, yes it appears better now for an iPad. However I did encounter one glitch. In the search feature, the “relevance” button and “this site” button cover up and hide the other buttons such as “Posts” and “Threads” buttons, whenever I hold my iPad in the portrait orientation. However when my iPad is held in the landscape orientation, everything looks fine. I didn’t realize the “Posts” and “Threads” buttons existed until I rotated my iPad.

Also, at the top of the main page it says “Search” but when you click it, it brings up a “Advanced Search” window. Are you having two different types, or are “Search” and “Advanced Search” the same thing? It’s a bit confusing. Because I know with the old software version, there was basic “Search” and there was “Advanced Search”. They were two separate things.

Regarding the qty output of the search engine, I take back what I said earlier about it returning a light number of output. For example, I searched for “cargo mat” and the search engine returned an impressive 18 pages of results. That’s a lot pages.

[apptest]

Originally Posted by JoeyO

Apptest, yes it appears better now for an iPad. However I did encounter one glitch. In the search feature, the “relevance” button and “this site” button cover up and hide the other buttons such as “Posts” and “Threads” buttons, whenever I hold my iPad in the portrait orientation. However when my iPad is held in the landscape orientation, everything looks fine. I didn’t realize the “Posts” and “Threads” buttons existed until I rotated my iPad.

Also, at the top of the main page it says “Search” but when you click it, it brings up a “Advanced Search” window. Are you having two different types, or are “Search” and “Advanced Search” the same thing? It’s a bit confusing. Because I know with the old software version, there was basic “Search” and there was “Advanced Search”. They were two separate things.

Regarding the qty output of the search engine, I take back what I said earlier about it returning a light number of output. For example, I searched for “cargo mat” and the search engine returned an impressive 18 pages of results. That’s a lot pages.

Thanks for the feedback on the buttons on iPad, im going to work on this more and get it looking better

As for search vs advanced search, they are all the same exact search engine. The advanced search just lets you do more filtering (say by username, by forum, newest vs oldest) and also lets you look at multiple pages of data. The regular search in the navigation bar is for a quick highly relevant set of results meant to get you quicker answer to what you need.

As always thanks for the feedback, and if you notice the quality of the results isn't great just let me know. That's the main part of the game right now. Id ideally like this to be better then the old system (in my opinion it is by a mile) but also better then commercial search engine results if that's possible. We shall see

[qx]

The beta search solves a problem I've had with older search, when a term appears maybe once in a 50 page thread but no context to which page it is on:



Shown in the example is that dark mode on my mobile firefox is kinda hard to read.

Also, search box is squished in mobile firefox, but fixed if changing to Desktop Mode in the firefox menu bar:

[JoeyO]

Apptest, oh, I didn’t even see the search feature in the upper navigation menu.

Yes, the buttons in the Advanced Search are all scrambled like spaghetti. The user QX noticed it too, apparently. His screenshot (in his post before mine) is similar to what I’m seeing on my iPad.

[apptest]

Originally Posted by qx

The beta search solves a problem I've had with older search, when a term appears maybe once in a 50 page thread but no context to which page it is on:

Attachment 3921704

Shown in the example is that dark mode on my mobile firefox is kinda hard to read.

Also, search box is squished in mobile firefox, but fixed if changing to Desktop Mode in the firefox menu bar:

Attachment 3921705

Originally Posted by JoeyO

Apptest, oh, I didn’t even see the search feature in the upper navigation menu.

Yes, the buttons in the Advanced Search are all scrambled like spaghetti. The user QX noticed it too, apparently. His screenshot (in his post before mine) is similar to what I’m seeing on my iPad.

Ok try it now, it should hopefully look correct now? Im still actively working on it now so if you happen to be on you might notice some continued movement / shifting of the items

[qx]

Originally Posted by apptest

Ok try it now, it should hopefully look correct now? Im still actively working on it now so if you happen to be on you might notice some continued movement / shifting of the items

Both issues I mentioned look great now:

[apptest]

Originally Posted by qx

Both issues I mentioned look great now:

Attachment 3921987

That’s an improvement but not perfect. I can still make that better. Question: Are you on an iPhone? Are setting dark mode manually or is your phone in dark mode and the color scheme comes automatically?
Thanks!

[qx]

Originally Posted by apptest

That’s an improvement but not perfect. I can still make that better. Question: Are you on an iPhone? Are setting dark mode manually or is your phone in dark mode and the color scheme comes automatically?
Thanks!

Android 16 on mobile, running firefox, which has dark mode set in browser. OS is also set to dark theme. As I mentioned, the contrast of (non-highlighted) text against the background color in search results is way better today: