Searching the Old Forum Posts
Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 5:36 pm
UPDATE: Please scroll down and read the latest post on this thread for an update.
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Hello everyone,
Many of you may have wondered how to search the old forum now that they are just static web pages without the search function built in. You may have noticed that some of the old posts turn up on Google search results but coverage has been spotty since we made the move to the new forum. I don't fully understand the indexing habits of Google, but I believe that today I have successfully uploaded an XML "sitemap" to Google's "search console" system which hopefully will allow for better search access of old posts.
So how do you use Google to search the old forum? Open Google.com and enter:
site:http://warsailors.com/forum/archive/forum/ [Your Search Terms]
For example, let us say I want to search the old forum for "Olaf Bergh." Then I would go to google.com and enter:
site:http://warsailors.com/forum/archive/forum/ "Olaf Bergh"
For me that yields 33 results. I used the quotation marks here in order to search for that exact phrase. If you want to search for a single word or don't care if it is an exact phrase, you can leave the quotes off. For example:
site:http://warsailors.com/forum/archive/forum/ Manila
yields 5 results for me.
I can't guarantee that every single old posting is in the index.
Best,
Konrad M Lawson
_____
Hello everyone,
Many of you may have wondered how to search the old forum now that they are just static web pages without the search function built in. You may have noticed that some of the old posts turn up on Google search results but coverage has been spotty since we made the move to the new forum. I don't fully understand the indexing habits of Google, but I believe that today I have successfully uploaded an XML "sitemap" to Google's "search console" system which hopefully will allow for better search access of old posts.
So how do you use Google to search the old forum? Open Google.com and enter:
site:http://warsailors.com/forum/archive/forum/ [Your Search Terms]
For example, let us say I want to search the old forum for "Olaf Bergh." Then I would go to google.com and enter:
site:http://warsailors.com/forum/archive/forum/ "Olaf Bergh"
For me that yields 33 results. I used the quotation marks here in order to search for that exact phrase. If you want to search for a single word or don't care if it is an exact phrase, you can leave the quotes off. For example:
site:http://warsailors.com/forum/archive/forum/ Manila
yields 5 results for me.
I can't guarantee that every single old posting is in the index.
Best,
Konrad M Lawson