When a new member enters the forum, he is usually smacked in the face with the 'search button'-hammer, but we continue to see new threads asking the same questions - questions which have been answered many times to many degrees of detail.
There are several obvious reasons for this, but one which I think carries a lot of the blame and can be fixed easily is the forum search button.

The search tab included in the forum software is both inefficient and confusing. The Google Custom Search is great and most people already know how to use it well and apply search operators.
However, many only notice the search tab because it is at the top of the page - and once their search has returned no relevant results a couple of times they give up and post a thread rather than look for better search possibilities. The bottom of the page would be an easy place to find the search bar if it wasn't for the large number of sub-forums and huge amount of advertising.

I would like to see the search tab removed entirely and the Google bar moved to the top of the forum - or at least somewhere more visible.

hey man

thx for feedback. the reason the googlesearch is on the bottom is actually because there is a major lag issue that occurs when i had it on the top. basically the LPF site would not load all the way while the search button is slow to load (keep in mind that code is hosted on other server so if its slow to load i can't do anything about it)

what i can do is put an small image in red or something that says 'click here to do Google search of LPF content" or something... when people click that button, it would scroll down to the bottom where the button is. i think this might help. thoughts?

i agree the google search is better than regular search of LPF vbulletin feature but before disabling it all out i would like feedback from others regarding whether they see value in it

The forum search bar at the top of the page is a joke. There must be some way to move the google search bar up and still have the page load in a reasonable time.

i will try it again now, please post feedback in this thread as to whether it's causing a hang

before i went as far to try as putting the javascript for google bar in an IFRAME but even that didn't fix it last time

changes will be attempted shortly

changes have been made on darkshadows layout (note that u might need to clear your browser cache to see the changes)

i am noticing some lag but not as bad as last time. it might add some jumpiness to the load? idk

thoughts?

i'll keep it as long as people are ok with the performance

A couple lines of CSS would fix the resizing problem.

Trevor

if we disable the regular search option its possible it could also speed up the server as vbulletin searches do take some CPU cycles

this server is powerful and its no issue keeping the search, but if people like gsearch more anyways AND the bar doesn't cause issues where it is at the top.. it could be a double win keeping gsearch and removing vbsearch

trevor,plz feel free to advise the CSS code and ill try making the switch
thx for your help man

peace

other idea.. anyone want to create a thread (to be stickied) in Welcome section advising people specifically about using the Googlesearch instead of vb search?

I am on an iPad using safari. The page seems to load just fine.

awesome

I'm using Google chrome beta for android. I don't seem to be experiencing any issues.

Seems to work perfectly fine on IE, chrome, and firefox here. I also just tried it on my phone, works just as well as it usually does (though, usual isn't good where I live )
TBH, I never knew about the google search bar at the bottom of the pages the entire two years I've been here...

Love the change.

Works on Chrome and Opera here.

Works on safari, iPhone, & chrome no lag at all

I agree with this guy. I've never seen the Google bar at the bottom either! I must be blind!

The "jumpiness" is really minimal, and everything seems to be loading fine. Using chrome, but also checked on IE and FF.

My vote is definitely for disabling, and removing the vbulletin search function altogether, so people aren't confused.

Threw it together kind of fast...

LPF Search, Introduction, and Tips

I'll check for grammar, and spelling tomorrow, too tired now.

It's kind of a pet peeve of mine when people don't use search first

The huge lag that originally caused the Google Search bar to
be moved to the bottom of the pages has seemed to almost
disappear.

It's only about a 500ms delay now at the top of the page using
FF..
Much better....


Jerry

You can contact us at any time on our Website: J.BAUER Electronics

yah glad it's better now

the irony is this could actually end up speeding up the site (although probably only slightly) since if people like the gsearch more than vbulletin search, i can disable built-in search, which could most likely add a slight speed boost to LPF since less CPU usage from searches

perhaps a poll should be created for the latter?

the only advantage i see of the built-in search is:

it could possibly find data that Google hasn't indexed yet (although google generally indexes LPF quite quickly)

Well the vbulletin search in my opinion is pretty useless, it never gets relevant stuff when I use it, it just gets keywords and can be completely off topic, the google search finds what I look for usually

Way to go. I noticed the move back to the top earlier today and everything seems pretty much normal for me.

I'm with the rest who say ditch the built in search, it's almost useless. Never understood why that thing works so poorly.

Cant use search or rep funtion on my iphone 4 with safari.. Really sucks. Page jumps when you type

Greetings,,

On your iPhone click the drop down at the very bottom left of the site (above the ads); try changing the theme from Darkshadows to Default Style. That fixes most all mobile safari issues for me.

On my iPhone i just hold until the menu comes up, then click "open in new page" then you can rep people

That's just for the rep though