World of Warcraft®

The seach function in the forums is so pitiful that it's a joke. Could we have some advanced options (and I don't mean the current "advanced" button either) that allow searching within a specified time frame, for a particular topic within a topic (to further narrow searches), the ability to search a particular forum? I'm sure the designers can check some other web sites with forums to get some really good search options.

Flywheel over in the Website Features forum stated that they are working on a more robust search engine with easier-to-access features. While there hasn't been any additional information that I'm aware of, your best bet for more info would be to check out the same forum.

Edit: Ohai from Customer Support. >.>;

I will just mention that while it may seem that sometimes the search feature is lacking, this website gets an extraordinary number of hits compared to other websites with more robust search engines. Searches put a load on the web servers, so advanced searching may not have been made available in order to keep the load (and thus cost) down.

01/06/2011 10:18 AMPosted by Maul

advanced searching may not have been made available in order to keep the load (and thus cost) down

Not the case. They are implementing a more robust search, but it takes time to design and code. There is a lot of work that goes into building search, especially with the amount of data Blizz has.

Agree with this. There really is no way to search only forums or specific forums. An advanced search for forums would definitely reduce unecessary posts as well reducing load.

Hopefully they have something coming soon because a forum without a search is useless

the search feature is pitiful. you should have some kind of advanced search, at least let you restrict your search by forum, armory profiles, or item database etc. or search for posts by a poster.

if you want to search for your own posts, you can click on your name on the reply to thread window or your own post and click "view my posts". or view posts on other people.

but ya how can you have a forum of this size and think no advanced search is acceptable blizz that is horrible.

I'd be happy with a "Search in title only" option. This is available on almost every.single.forum I've visited and it's really needed here considering how many times you get a totally unrelated search result because it had one word from your search in it.

01/16/2011 5:56 PMPosted by Twitch

I'd be happy with a "Search in title only" option. This is available on almost every.single.forum I've visited and it's really needed here considering how many times you get a totally unrelated search result because it had one word from your search in it.

To search just the subject, try this:

subject:<Your query>

Also, to search just the content of a post, use "content:"

I would like to make a request for a search engine (or option) that looks through the official files and announcements (as opposed to the forums).

I'm having some difficulties finding things on the new website. It is probably mostly me, but I'm sure the desire is for an easy to use website.

Stuff I've recently looked for an not been easily found:

1. Skins for druid catform/bearform for the various races (two different announcements - I eventually found tauren and night elf but never found worgen and troll)

2. Recruit a friend - used to be really obvious. I have to admit I only looked for 5 minutes or so.

Still haven't seen the ability to limit the time frame of the search. Seems no improvements have been made in the search function since my first post on this a year ago. :(