SUGGESTION: Include open requests in general search

[B5Freak]

I've noticed that when you use the general search bar at the top ribbon of every page, any open or fulfilled requests are not included in the search results. This can lead to confusion for anyone who might have something to share, but doesn't know that if they want to see if someone has a request for it, or if it's one already fulfilled, they need to search separately for it in the Requests section. General search should include everything on the site, not just available products.

[warrant63]

They are two separate systems, atm not possible.

[B5Freak]

And why is that? What was the deciding factor in having two seperate search functions?

[Ethiopia]

My limited knowledge of HTML tells me that each category (requests, current, upcoming, etc) is a separate database, and the software the site uses (WordPress....?) is not capable of addressing more than one database for each query.
We went through a software upgrade over a year ago and the mods are still catching their breath.
And doing two searches is really and trullio not an onerous task.

[B5Freak]

True, it's not. Unless you don't know to do that, post something because you only searched in one place, then get hit with 'you posted something already up' messages. Which happened to me about a month ago, although I think a contributing factor in my case was insufficient tagging.

I'm no webmaster either, so I can't suggest how merging these databases could be done or if that's even possible. But maybe somewhere in the site rules there could be a bit about searching each section of the site for content you want to post before doing so. And that would give folks a clue that they'd need to do that if they're also looking for something specific.

[FleshKage]

While I obviously can't speak to the backend, I did notice the request search URL is just a modification of the regular search URL. Compare:

https://zonegfx.com/?s=genesis+8+female
https://zonegfx.com/?s=genesis+8+female&wpessid=2030603

First one searches for "genesis 8 female" in blog posts, second searches the same term in the request section.

Seems like it would be easy to have a "suggestion link," maybe at the end of a set of blog search results, that's just the same search link but with the last bit appended to direct the user to the requests section. Something simple like that could increase request visibility.

[Author]

Posts