search engine stuff

[ipb]

please post feature requests & problems for the search engine bpal uses for the perfumes. i'm pinning this, because i *do* use this as a springboard for ideas (even if i turn down some for the moment due to difficulty) to make the search engine even better for *you*. ask and .. while you won't necessarily recieve, you may get it

 

future features:

- "maybe you meant..." when there are no results

--- basically, if you search for "rosa" and nothing comes up, it'll give a list of suggestions and possibly link so clicking on the word will search for it (eg, "rise" "rose") - only problem: how to eliminate fake words

--- this has some possible implementation notes

 

known issues:

- ability to do more than AND searches, like it used to be able to do. Sorry!

Edited March 24, 2008 by quantum spice

[Ina Garten Davita]

I was just over at the main site trying to do a musk AND amber AND NOT berry search but couldn't figure out how to do it. Is something in the works for this feature?

 

Sorry to be a pain and I didn't know if I was allowed to post here but I just thought I'd ask.

 

Thanks.

[ipb]

it's currently not set up to let you do that. you can do musk AND amber, musk AND NOT berry, or amber AND NOT berry at this time.

 

if it helps, only two or three of the musk AND amber results come with berry... but make sure you search as "musk amber" and have the and selected in the pull down menu.

 

i've got something hacked out to let you mix them (+musk +amber -berry), but it's not very intuitive, so i haven't released it yet.

[Mrs.Black]

Ditto with Cherry and The Red Quuen. (Cherry entered as search note, The Red Queen didn't pop up).

[ipb]

Ditto with Cherry and The Red Quuen. (Cherry entered as search note, The Red Queen didn't pop up).

it wouldn't. the word in the red queen is "cherries" - the search doesn't have a list of notes to search, just the descriptions.

[surf-tormented]

I was wondering why when I put certain words into the BPAL scent search engine, they give me 500 or more results. When I put it the whole name, like Queen of Spades, sometimes, I will get 570 results, even when I use it in quotes. It always says "Queen or of or Spades" when I am just searching for the name.

 

I have even tried this with a word like Caterpillar, which gave me 400 and some odd results. It is impossible to find what you are looking for, even if you know the name of it. Sometimes I can get lucky and do a search here and then find the group it is in.

 

Having 500 results for a word is crazy. Is it because I am using a Mac and/or Safari? I know my browser can mess things up, but usually not this badly.

Edited November 24, 2004 by Madame Nyx

[ipb]

by default, it searches for 'or' - for queen of spades, you want to search 'and' -- right now, it doesn't recognize phrases, only individual words. when you searched for the caterpiller, if you included the word "the" in there, it brought back every scent with "the" in it.

 

so when it said it was searching for "queen OR of OR spades" it was literally looking for everything with queen, of, or spades in the name or description. if you switch it to and, it becomes two results (king & queen of spades).

 

 

 

the advanced search page, which will be coming out whenever i finish the pluralization thing, will have an option to allow you to search titles, descriptions, or both, and to restrict it to one category (eg, love potions). search exact phrase will also be added to the options.. while those won't eliminate the above, it'll help.

 

 

unrelated, a friend of mine is working on something for "did you mean...?" because he has nothing better to do.

[ipb]

the search by scent families is now live.

 

the reviews have been updated, as well.

 

there are 5 scents not in there for scent families. coincidentally, they also don't have reviews. i'm sure you'll all be surprised to hear that they are the 5 new scents from the wolf and storm moon updates. i'll hopefully have that information up there this week.

 

*mwuah*

[ipb]

whee new stats

[ipb]

i am moving spicybrains this weekend. i won't flip the dns to the new host until everything looks all situated over there.

 

and i'm adding the march stats in now

 

boolean won't be added until i have time to do so, probably not until after finals

[ipb]

put in the stats for last month

[XxMINERVAxX]

hi quantum spice...

 

 

i've had this problem for a long time now with the search engine. when i first started using it, i guess i checked the box which says "search for only current scents" and now i can't get it to revert back to it's original where it has all the options.

 

it then says "switch to" at the bottom but there is no link to click. is it just my computer or something? i have firefox and had internet explorer before and both times it didn't work.

 

 

thanks *so* much for any help you can offer. i really appreciate everything!

[joseybird]

I've had the exact same problem. The only reason why I can get to it at all is because the advanced option page is bookmarked on my laptop, but that's going to go away soon when my hard drive is replaced

[ipb]

with the help of the very patient josey, we managed to get something working for that. i still don't know what the problem was, but it's fixed!

[XxMINERVAxX]

with the help of the very patient josey, we managed to get something working for that. i still don't know what the problem was, but it's fixed!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

egads! it *is* fixed! weeee! thank you thank you thank you!

[medvssa]

Kind of old topic, but I hope this is the right place to ask this.

As it happens with the search of this forum, searches of less than 4 letters don't seem to work. This is a pity because I want to know which scents have rum ;P

 

Is there any possibility to get the limit lowered?

[jewelbug]

Kind of old topic, but I hope this is the right place to ask this.

As it happens with the search of this forum, searches of less than 4 letters don't seem to work. This is a pity because I want to know which scents have rum ;P

 

Is there any possibility to get the limit lowered?

Ditto. I was searching for fig, and ended up having to do a find on each individual scent category page, rather than just using the engine. Not that i'm unwilling to go to those lenghts for bpal, though, cuz...well, um, i did it.

[darklorelei]

You guys should download Nattie's bpal excel file if you can. You can use excel's find function to find what you're looking for.

 

Think about the three letter thing in realistic terms. We'll use the word "rum". You know what these are? Forums. You'd easily be looking through just as many results. Sure, you could limit it, but people forget a lot.

[jewelbug]

I just noticed that the search engine page doesn't have the rappacini's garden category in the navigation menu. Just an FYI for the next time its updated. It does have maelstrom, though, so I'm guessing the garden was just overlooked.

 

ETA: I admit to having a minor freak-out upon finding the garden missing, since I am LOVING my strangler fig and then thought it missing. I calmed down when i hit the back button and found it was only a search page issue. Hehe.

Edited April 12, 2006 by jewelbug

[ipb]

i won't have time to fix the menu or update the db until about about may 12th (when i'm done with school... at least for three days). right now, i've got 3 weeks of class plus finals left, but that's not so much the problem as everything else i have to do (i've got a big national licensing exam on the 22nd, i'm running my office solo for 2 weeks starting the 24th, and that brings us to finals week )

 

regarding the 4 letter thing: it's something i can't fix without completely rewriting how it does the boolean searches. i tried to do it other ways, but this was the only way that worked consistently.

[shadith]

I noticed that many new scents don't show up when using the search engine for specific notes or names (eg The Salon, new GCs,..). I'm not sure since which update the scents are not integrated anymore, but it's been a while now. Just wanted to ask if they are going to be included soon?

 

Thanks

[Morrighana]

With any luck, yes, they'll be in there soon. Quantum Spice needs some data from one of the other mods, and then she'll be able to input everything into the search.

[indicolite]

The Salon category is not searchable using the BPAL site search engine.

 

I was trying to find oils other than Judith Victorious that have chestnut blossom and neither current scents search nor advanced search returned any scents for "chestnut" - they did not return Judith Victorious, either. I checked the possible categories I could search, using the advanced search, and saw that neither "Salon" nor "The Salon" was an included category.

 

That adventure DOES answer my question - if any other oils include chestnut blossom, they are probably also in the Salon, or in A Picnic in Arkham, which is not a searchable category either. However, could this woeful (to Indi the self-confessed Salon whore) omission be rectified when you get a chance?

 

ETA: Noticed that the issue did come up back in August; I hope I do not appear to be a nag, as that was not my intention.

Edited January 7, 2007 by indicolite

[Firiel]

Stupid question: How do I get to this marvelous search engine? It sounds like the best thing ever, but I can't find it on the site.

[jarvenpa]

You want to go to the Lab site (not the forum site)

 

http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/

 

(I use the Alice skin and the lab link is on the top of my screen in red in a list under the pretty BPALORG and pictures of Alice and crew).

 

When you are at the lab site click on the opening beautiful black and white "title page" to enter. Look on the lefthand side and you will see a long list of words, starting with Welcome and ending with View/Check out. Fifth word up from View/Check Out is Search. Click on Search, and lo and behold you will be on the Search page, where there is a little Search description for with a box where you can type in what you desire.

 

Which could be a scent note: "vanilla" or the name of a fragrance so you can figure out which group it belongs to. There is also, you will note, an advanced search mode (I have yet to try this).

 

Enjoy!

(edited to add: yay, Firel, you joined the forum on my one year forum anniversary. Obviously we have a karmic connection!)

Edited February 10, 2007 by jarvenpa