Ability to Search Forums (Reconsideration)

I’ll try to not make this too long, but I’ve got a couple different points I’d like to touch on here. I think staff should consider adding a keyword search for the forum. To be clear, I am fully aware that this suggestion has been rejected in the past. The reason I’m bringing it up again is because I believe it is a good suggestion that deserves to be reconsidered. Allegedly, this suggestion has been rejected multiple times, but I could only find one other post on it. (Lack of posts could be caused by deletion, not really sure, just linking this one for reference really.) Pretty much every forum out there has a search system. It’s inherent to the nature of forums to need a search system, due to the multitude of information and the organization of threads. Searching for something even non-specific can take forever, especially in a forum where similar posts are not allowed. I’m surprised that PFQ still doesn’t have a search system in its long course of being a website, and I believe adding one is a great opportunity to improve the quality of life here. I’d like to bring up Niet’s take on the idea: This reasoning doesn’t make sense. Users are humans, so if we search “beast ball” in the forums and find this post saying OP is selling beast balls, we would know that OP is selling beast balls. Humans are smart enough to close the tab if it isn’t the post we want. And why would the computer need to know what’s going on? To it, “beast balls” doesn’t mean anything either; It’s just matching a sequence of letters. (This is not a personal attack on Niet, I just believe his logic here was rushed.) I’d also like to add that in this same thread, Niet himself said he’d be open to considering the idea: This would be the perfect time to reconsider it! It's been five years since this reply, and as I said, most forums out there do have some form of a search system. For the sake of accessibility and even just convenience, I would even dare say it’s a necessity to forums. And even if there’s “coding difficulties,” why would that be such a problem? I’m sure we’re all very aware of this quote by now: It seems to me that a good idea was dismissed five years ago without the consideration it deserved, and has never been properly brought up since then. I really think being able to search is a good idea that deserves another look. If anyone else has additional input on this, I’d be very open to hearing it! Again, just to be clear, this is not a personal attack on anyone in the staff. This is simply for the benefit of the PFQ community. TLDR: Forum search is an excellent, practical idea with zero drawbacks, and I see no reason as to why it shouldn’t be implemented. I think we would all benefit from the ability to search the forums. Thank you for reading!

I fully support this, I was really shocked to find that I had to ctrl f page by page to find anything on this site, it is easily one of the only sites I've ever come across with no forum search. That said it may be too late to implement this on PFQ as the code here is very old and Niet is attempting to refactor/code things in PFNew. I hope he will have forum search there.

At this time I still recommend using Google search. Use site:pokefarm.com to limit the search to PFQ. It works far better than anything I could make in a reasonable amount of time. At some point in the last five years, I did actually implement a forum search, but it was unsuccessful. It rarely found the things you wanted and lagged the server when used - not ideal! So it was removed again. It would also be worth considering why search is wanted. What kind of things are you searching for? Because if it's mostly trades then that signals a need for a better trade marketing system. If it's Help threads then the FAQ may need updating. Stuff like that is almost more important than a cover-all-cases search feature.

I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to get at here. Searching is simply to find things, whether for trades, guides, mentions of your favorite pokemon, trying to find a post you remember reading a while back, etc. There’s no one reason to search things, and I am just one person. so I can’t speak for the entire PFQ community when it comes to what people will search for. I also doubt people will use the search system for just trades or just looking up guides etc. Trades are a big one, yes, because the forum is used for trades, but it’s not the only thing, and while it can be reworked without implementing a search function, that’s not the case for everything. What if someone is trying to find art but don’t remember who the artist is? Or what if they’re trying to find a roleplay prompt from a while ago? Using Google isn’t always the most efficient way either. It searches the entire Pokefarm website, not just the forums. I suppose one could search “from:pokefarm.com/forums” but then there’s still the issue of searching subforums. For example, if you wanted to look at the suggestions board, you’d have to do “from:pokefarm.com/forums/20” or “from:pokefarm.com/forums/25” if you specifically wanted to check the rejected suggestions. Then there’s the issue of having to open all those posts in a new tab because Google just shows a tiny snippet. It’s just… yeah, it’s a bandaid, but wouldn’t you rather heal the wound? I think the server lag is an extremely important thing to consider, though. It can certainly be an obstacle, and I don't know enough about the site to give any input on that. I’m sure you’d know way better than me how your own site works! Sorry that I can’t be more helpful in regards to that. But I do believe there’s always a way to do things, even if it takes a little bit of figuring out.

I think that the implementation of even a bare-bones search bar system for text phrases would be a great improvement. Personally, I think the trade marketing system itself works perfectly fine. The current method of posting trade threads and having people reply to them works well enough that I don't think any significant changes are needed there. While the trade marketing system itself is fine, navigating to find what you're looking for can often be a longer process than I think is necessary. In the Beast Ball example you gave, which OP quoted, you brought up that there would be issues diffrentiating between "Buying Beast Ball" and "Selling Beast Ball" threads. Personally, I don't really understand where the main logistical difficulties of coding this would be. My knowledge of web coding and query searches is pretty basic, but I imagine that something like filtering threads by whether they have a key phrase or not (like "Beast Balls" or "Buying") wouldn't be outside the scope of what is possible/reasonable to implement. Obviously, you have a better understanding of the way PF is coded and what obstacles might stand in the way of implementing such a feature. I'm definitely interested in hearing your thoughts about the logistical obstacles here. Regardless of whether or not this gets implemented, I think that this discussion is worthwhile and constructive.

Here is just one example of a way I use forum Search on most sites, that is not covered by your suggestion to use Google: I will search my own name to check if anyone has mentioned me in their thread or shop and I haven't seen it or forgot to respond. Because on PFQ there is no way to ping anyone nor check your own forum post history. Google cannot help you there if you want to find recent (note: recent!!) threads as well. Googling beast ball brings you deleted threads from months ago. That's a nother thing PFQ has an issue with but that's neither here nor there. But we really should talk about why everything resource wise for templates etc seems to be deleted with no way of checking who made the thrrad....

If the search bar was to be implemented would it look for "key words" in the title or the post itself? Key word as in what you're looking for like a best ball If it's the title it won't be very effective because people might name their thread " Selling summons" or "Buying summons" those types of threads won't get "highlighted" because the words beast ball are not there If it's the post itself then the problems example trade thread post points out apply