Is there any way to include single letters in a search when one wishes to have them joined to another word e.g. Burke C? I notice enclosing this in quotes “Burke C” doesn’t seem to help.
No, I’m afraid not. Only words of 3 or more characters are indexed by the search engine. But remember that the Chiffboard is also indexed by Google. So try a Google search instead.
just in case yer not geeky enough…
enter
“Burke C” site:forums.chiffandfipple.com
in the search box
Thanks, Denny. I was about to add the bit about the site tag.
Denny that is great geek stuff. Thank you both!
I have no patience… 
The problem with Google search is that it doesn’t know that it’s searching forum posts, so you can’t search titles only. It’s also tedious, because you have to specify the site, and open another window/tab. In many cases google forum searches yield archive pages, which tend to have no navigation. Goog also tends to return every post in a thread with the search string in the subject or quoted text. So if the first thread it finds happens to be a flame war between two out of work writers…
While having CF in Google is an advantage over other forums, I’ve always wondered why forums have such universally lousy search facilities but any time someone posts asking a question that’s been ever asked before, search is the first solution recommended?
For example, I’d like to find what people think is the best general music book. When I search on CF for ‘best music book’, in titles only, I’m told that music and best are ignored. This is pretty silly, considering that a huge chunk of any forum activity is people swapping advice, and asking about the best this or that is so common.
Yeah, but it’s not just PHPBB, they all mostly stink. Some forums require a captcha one every search, some block you from doing searches within x seconds of each other. Many don’t allow booleans or quoted strings or just ignore them, and many don’t give any help at all on what kind of searches can be done.
I udnerstand that searching can add load to the server, and the other problems search can enable, but surely there’s a better way.
The frustrating part is that the level of intolerance for repeating a question seems to be proportional to the difficulty of doing a search.
I don’t mean to be singling out CF here - it is a bit above average actually.
My emphasis of what I understood that to be Denny’s point. Gift horses, mouths etc.
write a good interface for them 
Many of the users take six months to figure out how to use the quote button. (okay I know a few that have been around for dang near a decade that haven’t a clue)
You can not allow these people much flexibility if you want the system to remain functional.
that and…They are the ones that have the capability to change it.
Ignoring that the BB runs on a relational database and Google is not…
I just tried including the word “announcements” in the Google search to try to ‘specify’ the page with the discussion titles rather than pages like the one you are reading where it does not appear. Unfortunatly it does appear in the source for this page and Google (not surprisingly) does not know that the script chooses not to display it.
Tricky things database applications - spot the feature shown up by what appears to be a misquote of my post by Denny. Him starting to quote it should have made the edit I was doing be flagged as such.
but it does know that the forum is known by the value of 3 
Announcements is a bit of text for the forum named 3
copy the next line & have a go
“Policy Change:” f=3 site:chiffandfipple.com
Google’s database is propagated by bots reading the HTML not by the actual BB data base
Ah, so that’s a possibility. This seems to work (as an experiment that is):
“Burke C” “f=2” site:forums.chiffandfipple.com
Only two displayed hits because 2 is the Flute Forum.
and
“Burke C” “f=2” Posted: site:forums.chiffandfipple.com
only returns one
Well, considering the history of the Chiffboard, now approaching one million posts, I think most people here are extraordinarily helpful and tolerant of repetition.
The difference between someone posting a question because a) they’re unable to find the answer via search, or b) they haven’t even bothered to try, is usually pretty clear. Sometimes as clear as “I tried searching for X but couldn’t find it”.
Yes, the search function is flawed and limited - the Chiffboard is focused on facilitating discussion, not information retrieval. It is what it is. And yet … a simple search on, for example, the word “mute” in the Whistle forum turns up 26 pages of posts, many of which are easily identifiable as relevant. So the next post asking “Has anyone tried to mute their whistle?” is likely to meet with at least a suggestion to use the Search. Especially from some people here who have freely given of their time, effort, and experience to craft detailed answers in the past.
Not to single you out, Steve; you seem like a nice guy. But the attitude “gimme my information - NOW” sometimes strikes my ear as the voice of entitlement of the Me generation, regardless of age.
Here you have the phpBB software, created entirely by volunteer effort, and made available for free. You have the Chiffboard, paid for entirely out of Dale Wisely’s pocket with no expectation of return, and staffed by a few volunteers who spend hours of their own time every day keeping it going, killing spam, finding lost passwords, etc. Not to mention the loyal, ordinary Chiffers whose contributions make the site worth visiting in the first place.
But often what the moderators hear are mostly complaints, and little thanks. So maybe we can be forgiven if pointing out to us that the Chiffboard is not perfect strikes a sour note … 
I for one would want to recognise the service provided by the people behind Chiffboard. I am sure that I am not alone.
During a normal discussion it is always easy to thank someone who answers a question, but there is rarely an opportune time to thank all those who provide the platform where the question can be asked and answered. Perhaps this thread is one such opportunity - one that I eagerly grab.
For me C&F is one of the three main resources that have enabled me to progress in whistling (the other two are whistles and YouTube). I would have not learnt so much so fast without Chiffboard.
So heartfelt thanks from me.
Hear, Hear!