Hi Dan,

I have a question that I hope you might be able to answer. I have been talking with Eliot in this thread
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...m11/HTML/001778.html
and am desperately trying to figure this out. While I appreciate Eliots efforts, it doesn't really seem to be going anywhere. I checked several sites, and so far the only one's I have been able to find that do what I'm looking for is yours and Eliots. Anyway, I did a search for Bowcreek Variety (because Bowscreek is in the title only and Variety is in the description only) and sure enough, it pulled up the link. Please Also Note: A search like this will not work on all other sites I have tried, so that is why I'm asking you. I noticed that you have added a hidden field called substring... and giving it a value of 1 or 2 on the advance search. Do you mind sharing how you did this? I did install and try the exact word search mod but it did not work when I did a search similar to the one above (obviously using relative keywords on my site), so that is why I don't think this is what I need. ---but I could be wrong. Anyway, I would really appreciate any input you could give me.

P.S. I started a new thread because I wanted Dan to read this........

Thank You

Keep in mind that Dan is using Links SQL for his LINKS portal site.

Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee
Anthro TECH,L.L.C
www.anthrotech.com
* Be sure to visit the Resource Center for FAQ's, Modifications and Extra Goodies!!
* Search Forums!
* Say NO to Duplicate Threads. :)
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You're not referring to me, are you? If so, I think we have a case of mistaken identity... pugdog is "from postcard.com," although I don't know what his name actually is. I don't have any modifications to my search setup. Also, my current Links installation is version 2; my SQL setup hasn't been moved into place yet.

If you are looking for pugdog, I think he mostly sticks to the SQL forum.

If I'm not the Dan being referred to, forget I chimed in.

"Dan"

Yep..Dan is correct...It is actually Scott who is pugdog and the creator of www.postcards.com, not www.postcard.com.

Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee
Anthro TECH,L.L.C
www.anthrotech.com
* Be sure to visit the Resource Center for FAQ's, Modifications and Extra Goodies!!
* Search Forums!
* Say NO to Duplicate Threads. :)
----------------------

Oops...my bad, your absolutely right Eliot, this is not Dan Kaplan's site, sorry! Disregard the first message then about the hidden field substring. Anyway, since I have you tuned in Dan, maybe I could get you to jump into this topic! :-) Well, I did try a search on your site run-down.com for the keywords Plus Ted ---- you would think it would pull up this link below:

50 PLUS CLUB 1999 -
Inspired by Ted Poulos, the world record holder with 222 races in 1997. This is a club for runners trying to complete 50 races in a year. It is open to everyone and completely free.

Unfortunately it doesn't! Ok here I go with the redundant thread...hehehehe, sorry Eliot. My problem is that I have added a few extra fields "City" and "State". Because these are two seperate fields, when someone does a search for San Diego California using the OR method, it will pull 698 results, and only two of them are actually located in San Diego, the other 696 are in a different city in California. So I would hope that doing an AND search would pull up just those 2 results, but I get NO Results just like it happened on your site. Like I said in the other related threads, I did install and test the Exact Word Search mod and I still get the same results. :-( Anyway, if you plan on correcting/modifying your search and figure out a way to do.....please..please..please let me know how you did it. Then again, if your upgrading to sql, this probably won't even interest you...but hey it's worth a shot to ask.

BTW--Sorry for publicizing your site pugdog.

Thank You

Ok Domenic, you've got my attention.
I'm not completely sure I follow you. If you do a regular search for "Ted" it's the first link in the results. If you search for "Plus Ted" with the default AND matching, it doesn't show up. If you go to the search options and search for "Plus Ted" with OR matching, the desired link shows up as the first result. Is this not what you're asking?

By the way, searching with Links SQL is a whole new ballgame... That's the main reason I haven't progressed beyond the testing stage.

Dan

Hi Dan,

Well I'm glad I got your attention! Right, it will pull up results using the OR method, but it also pulls up 139 other links (on your site) which may or may not be completely relevant. I'm not sure if it's as quite as important with yours because you don't have additional fields like city and state. But on mine if someone searches (Using OR) for San Diego California on my site it WILL pull up results, but 696 of them aren't relevant to San Diego only California! But if they use AND (wich I'm using as Match all words option) it will pull up 0 results. You see where I'm going with this? I'm just trying to make it as easy as possible for someone to find what there looking for....and weeding out all the other sites that aren't relevant. Yeah, I could live with just using the OR search, but I know there is a way to match all the keywords searched within seperate fields. Sorry, if I'm not being clear..I'm trying to explain myself as much as possible. If you have any input, I'd love to hear it. :-)

Thank You

This is my last piece of advice....(trust me)...



Look at some of the DBMAN sites in action...see if the search engine does what you want it to do...

If you want some quick examples...check out my DBMAN sites:

www.coco.cc.az.us/cgi-bin/directory/index.cgi?db=default&uid=default

www.anthrotech.com/career/

www.anthrotech.com/sl90/cdbase/

If so, then I would recommend using DBMAN and LINKS as your front-end applications. Use DBMAN for the search utility. All you would have to do is change the fields in the default.cfg file that comes with DBMAN to the fields that you have in the links.def file. (Since the two programs have same structure of database files, you can use the same .db file in both scripts.)

You would also have to edit the other configurations in DBMAN...But see if the search engine in DBMAN fits your needs.

BTW: DBMAN lacks the And and Or boolean connector options that comes with LINKS. (Also there is a Templated version of DBMAN that you can use, which is very similar to the LINKS Templates.)

That is all I have to say....

Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee
Anthro TECH,L.L.C
www.anthrotech.com
* Be sure to visit the Resource Center for FAQ's, Modifications and Extra Goodies!!
* Search Forums!
* Say NO to Duplicate Threads.
----------------------











[This message has been edited by Eliot (edited February 13, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Eliot (edited February 13, 2000).]

Good suggestion Eliot, but it still seems like a work-around for what I would like to do with links. I don't want to lose the and/or search options.... Plus, it can be done with Links........obviously you had it done! ;-) I'm not sure how the programer did it for yours, but I'm sure someone else out their will also see that this is an important function/addition for links, and hopefully come up with something. Who knows, maybe learn more perl and do it myself! :-) Anyway, thanks again Eliot.

Dan any ideas?

Thank You

Hi Domenic,

I'd love to help, but I'm sorry to say I have nothing useful to add. I'm still not really sure what it is exactly that you're asking or how I have anything to do with it... Again, I haven't done anything with modifying search criteria or output on my site. I don't follow the differentiation you're looking for between AND/OR matching.

Dan

Hey Dan,

No worries...actually originally I thought it was your site that was doing what I wanted, but it turned out that it wasn't! So I figured that since you already read the thread, you might be interested in this also. Anyway, to sum it up, all I was looking to do was match all kewords from seperate fields. So on your site if someone typed in Plus Ted, that it would only pull up that listing because that is the only listing that has both words in them. If you look at this listing that appears on that search:

Colleges:NCAA Division II:Pacific West Conference
Simon Frasier (SFU) Track & Field - Located in Beautiful British Columbia.

....well, what does this really have to do with Plus Ted??? My main concern was to match keywords across fields and links does not do that. I'm really surprized that this issue has not got anyone interested in fixing it. BTW- I'm not the first one to ask this question.....the good news is, is that yes it can be done because Eliot had a programer do it on his. I'm going to contact a few installers/programers on this and see what happens. Thanks again.

I think I follow you now...

Located

Dan

BTW- If anyone else does read this, my main concern was to match keywords ACROSS fields. To keep it simple lets say I have 2 links in my database

Example Links:

#1 Title- Disneyland
Description- enjoy the ride
FIELD 3- San Diego FIELD 4 - California

#2 Title- Gossamer Threads
Description- Gossumer Threads Support Forum
FIELD 3- Los Angeles FIELD 4 - California

So when a user types a search for:
San Diego California
....the only link I want to appear is #1. Currently with an OR search it will pull up both links! With an AND search, it will pull up 0 links. I obviously have more than 2 links in my database, so with an OR search it is ALSO pulling up results that have nothing to do with San Diego. Anyway, I'm glad you follow me now Dan! :-)

Hi Domenic,

Did You ever find the solution for searching
Across Fields using the AND connector

Or a Solution of searching the complete DB line at once instead of searching field by field

Regards,
Sanuk