Free Republic Search Engine *Experimental*

Search Free Republic ^

[John Robinson]

I've placed online an experimental search engine. It currently only searches article titles. If the technology proves worthy, I'll try to expand it to search articles and commentary. If it cooks the server, it's outta here.

It has a few interesting features, please give it a whirl.

[John Robinson]

You will find a link to the search engine on latest posts, in the link button bar, titled "Search".

Or, click Search Free Republic

[StoneColdGOP]

Thank you, John.

[Lurker]

You are amazing.

L

[Arthur McGowan]

I've been completely baffled by the search function for a long time. I put in one word, I get results. I put in another word that's also in the title of the same article, and get zero results. I put in two words that are in the title, and get results. I put in two other words that are also in the title, and get zero results.

[xm177e2]

Nice.

Some quick suggestions:

add "order by author"

Maybe add a "limit search to this category" (ie: culture/society, political humor/cartoons)

Add a date range so people can look at a narrow band of time

If you want to see what a really nice article search engine looks like, just look at the search engine on LEXIS-NEXIS. (of course, the whole business of LEXIS-NEXIS is centered on their search engine, and this is just a peripheral thing for FR).

You could put multiple fields in, like one for "search for any of these words," and another field for "search for this exact phrase" and one for "search for threads NOT containing any of these words" so people could combine different search capabilities.

[riley1992]

Wow, that goes back really far. Very cool. At what point do we need to go to the archives?

[DoughtyOne]

That looks pretty good John. I note that it goes back to around the middle of 1999. Is there a plan to bring titles on-line from prior to that?

[John Robinson]

EEP! I just wanna know if this thing is going to melt the server. Bells and whistles later. :-)

[Senator Pardek]

Excellent.

Before, I was trying to find this - 9.8: Mel Reynolds transcript (censored adult content...damn funny, though.) - through Google, and I got nuttin'.

[DoughtyOne]

I expect you'll be adding in features, so I won't bother you with other requests. Good work.

[John Robinson]

Most titles should now be online. The only stuff not online is anything that could possible be an LA Times or Washington Post article. Anything containing a variation of those words remains unavailable. Everything else should be available.

[eureka!]

Wow. I thought I'd test it and typed in "monica" to give it some work. Blam! They they were in a millisecond. I would hope that you have lots of coolant for this engine...

[Cold Heat]

Sure seems to be a lot better. I still have not figured out what the existing engine wants for a thorough search.

[steveo]

I just did a search on:

Moose Cheese

Works great!

[MizSterious]

I searched for a couple of things, and got lots of good results. It appears Free Republic is still online, so evidently it didn't fry the server. Regarding the excellent notification feature--I'm wondering if it would be possible to set it to notify us when a given thread (or several; no doubt there would have to be limits) has new messages added? Sometimes there's a thread or two I'd like to keep track of--the "bookmark" feature works ok, but notification would be better. I adore the notification feature!

[Cool Guy]

Thank you, John!

[LBGA]

John, I gave it a quick test, and my search on the word "worm" did not give a reply I just made with that word. This will only search the first post and not the replies?

I would like to see the results sorted in descending order so that the most current appear first. Since I have way to many senior moments, it is unlikely I will remember a phrase from months ago and even attempt to look for it. If I am going to look for a phrase, it would be in something recent.

This will be a super cool feature. I hope it doesn't cause the server to crash and burn.

[syriacus]

Retrieval is wonderfully quick!!

A real pleasure to use. Thank you.

[Cool Guy]

Hey LBGA, good to see ya around! This feature is provided to avoid senior moments :)