LGF Technical Update: Search Tips

Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 5:55:51 pm PST

Here are some answers to some frequently asked questions about our advanced search feature.

To search for comments by a particular user, make sure the button labeled “Comments” is selected, then use something like this:

"user:zombie"

You need the quotes — and you’ll need to be logged in to search comments.

That example searches for all comments by the username ‘zombie,’ within the time range specified by using the popup calendars.

Oh yes, the popup calendars! To specify the 'To' and 'From' dates, click the little red calendar icons in those fields.

To select a date in the popup calendars, you need to actually click on one of the days in the calendar; exiting with the ‘Close’ button will not change the date.

Searching comments is restricted to 180 days at a time, to avoid putting too much strain on the server. If your ‘From’ date is set to more than 180 days away from your ‘To’ date, it will be adjusted automatically to be 180 days before the ‘To’ date.

Searching front-page LGF posts is not restricted in any way.

Also, there is some support for boolean search operators and wildcard characters to further refine your search terms; see this page at MySQL.com for some examples. (Note: I haven’t implemented the relevance-ranking features yet.)

UPDATE at 11/14/07 10:48:45 am:

The search code gets a little cranky when I extend the maximum number of searchable days to 180, so I've cut it back down to 90 days maximum which seems to work better.