Alright, perhaps a little overboard. The search feature of this forum is under utilised by non-regular posters - they don't even bother to use it far too often.

I feel that if it was more prominent we'd see a reduction in bloat posts of no lasting relevance to the forum.

I request that the search link is replaced by a form input and automagically submits to the search page.

Heck, if you want to go nuts, you could slip in a cookie that remembers the last search keywords too

There's already one, at the bottom of every forum index, but it's definitely not noticeable.

I would imagine that's down to the forum software itself, probably nothing any of the board admin here could do about it.

i also suggested this here which is kinda like what you suggested

Hell, if its just the forum software, I can move that box. Tell the big K to send me a PM or e-mail with a copy of the forum software, and I'll code that change. shouldn't take me more than a half hour.

Acutally, later builds of UBB have the search box prominently about; I think that this would take little time to do as you suggest.

As for forum indexes, sure, its good, but it should be bigger, shinier and cry "SEARCH IS HERE".

I'll be perfectly honest, people will not use the search feature because they know it's there. People want an answer directed straight at them, they do not want to use other resources to find the answer. This is why you occasionally get someone posting a thread titled 'Software caused connection abort??' directly underneath the sticky thread that applies to that. People do not bother to look at the screen before hitting 'Post', so no matter how prominent you make the search feature, the most it's going to do is prevent 1-2, maybe 5 people from posting.

Using the search feature when you're unsure about something is boring. People don't like to do something if it's not instant, they don't like scrolling through pages of threads to find an answer, nor do they want to spend the time solving their issue. In fact, some people actually get agressive and rude when advised to use the search feature - It's just something we have to deal with when helping here

Large or significant changes aren't generally made to the board so that it makes it easier for Krejt to update it when needed. Obviously, if there is a problem with the board 200 odd people will notice it straight away due the amount of visitors this forum receives, so it's important hardly any (if not NO) risks are taken

My 2 cents.

Regards,

Nah. It wouldn't work for 90% of them even if it reached out and grabbed them by the throat.

Greetings!

I was just curius, I know there are some that search and reply "My search didn't resolve anything", or something to that degree. Makes me wonder if they are aware of the fields "Forum or Category to search" and "Date Range". Perhaps a small tweak to have both default to "All Forums" and "All Posts" respectivly? I would think it would be a small tweak in the template file, and would still preserve the user base from any harm or unnecessary loss of data.

[P.S. That wasn't a specific reply to you ctrl, just your name was convenient]

not a problem .. and (if it can be done) I second that idea.

well, if man wants this done (hint hint), he should post here (hint) and provide the code to the BB (HINT) and someone else ( ) might just be able to help out.

Sure they don't read what is right in front of them. Thats because to them the center of the screen looks like a clusterfuck of text, and is hard to distinguish at first glance (we, on the other hand, are more adept readers, so we see more quickly, because we are trained at it)
Better use of higher contrast colors would help solve the problem - ie Zebra striping on tables.

People are used to searching for information: If you want to find a site, you tend to Google for it - a nice, simple, minimal form which cries "put the text in this box".
If a large search box was placed just under the menulinks, it would become very useful in the user's mind: its not a seperate search, but more of an address bar.

As for UBB code: STFW!
UBBThreads Homepage

Thoughts on forward compatability: I haven't looked at the UBB code, but either it should be templated (alright, a little doubtful), or simple DOM javascript could append nodes in the relevant spot.

Don't tell me about people who surf the web without javascript on. So what? They just get the less enhanced, no search box option. Whoopee. If a user is smart enough to turn off javascript because they are worried about security, chances are the user probably has no troubles with roaming the internet and searching for data.