Forum Search Tools

[HookLine]

Search Tools

Here are some tools that can be used to find information on the HomeDistiller site (the home site, the forum, and the Wiki). Links to most of these tools can be found in the header at the top of every page on the HD forum. Use them to search for specific information on HomeDistiller, before asking for that information on the forum.

These tools are

1) the Static Menu for the home site,
2) the forum's own search tool, and
3) this HD specific Google search phrase:

site:http://homedistiller.org/forum [insert your search terms here]

For example:
site:http://homedistiller.org/forum tequila
or
site:http://homedistiller.org/forum "fruit mash"

The HD specific Google search phrase has many advantages over the forum's own search tool. It is able to do phrase specific searches, (the ones placed inside quotes, as in the second example above), which can greatly reduce the number of less relevant search results. It is a whole site search, while the site's internal phpBB search removes many common words, making some searches harder to perform. The Google search has better logical selection (AND, OR, NOT, etc), where you can better qualify what you are interested in, allowing you to narrow in on fewer search results which contain more of what you are interested in. Also, the Google ranking (relevant pages higher up), seems to work better than the phpBB search.

There is also this multi-site Google search tool specifically for hobby distilling sites (in English).

And don't forget the HD Wiki, though that still needs a lot of work.


[The External Link Rule is now in a separate post here.]

[Husker]

When using Google to search any site (also this is a problem as Google doesn't crawl the site instantly, which can be a problem sometimes...) the search should look more like this:

site:http://homedistiller.org intext:"search term" < I suggest using this on the HD Google search as the stock search term for people as it will help out alot. Notice I dropped the /forum part aswell.

it is very important to put quotes in the intext: search as that searches for both words in one place (if using two words) also important that after a Google dork (the intext: part) that there is no space between the : and the start of your search term.

This link may help some of you further narrow your search - http://www.googlebig.com/list_of_query_ ... of_google/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[Denis Zen]

Very helpful! Thank you for your time and effort!

[NZChris]

I type site:homedistiller.org/forum/ into the URL followed by the search term. That gets me better results than the search bars offered on the forum pages. It doesn't seem to make much difference if you type the same query into another search engine .... I often don't use Google.

[Setsumi]

I type site:homedistiller.org/forum/ into the URL followed by the search term. That gets me better results than the search bars offered on the forum pages. It doesn't seem to make much difference if you type the same query into another search engine .... I often don't use Google.

, another way is to type your search term and site
setsumi's twins homedistiller. org

[Regina80+]

Gin column

[Bushman]

Gin column

How does this relate to the thread? Are you looking for information on gin?

[Tōtōchtin]

Is there a way to read just the threads of a member. As in I want to read threads from people who make rum. Some of them have over 6000 posts. That's too much to go through.

[Sporacle]

Click their profile.
Then under total post
Click search users posts

[Tōtōchtin]

Click their profile.
Then under total post
Click search users posts

The user post shows contents where they replied in someone's thread. I am wanting a way to just see the threads a user post. For example you have close to 1000 posts. I'll bet less then 50 threads. Much easier
T

[Sporacle]

Then advance search when in that person's total post for key words.
This site is about doing a lot of searching, bookmarking and filtering.

[NZChris]

Click their profile.
Then under total post
Click search users posts

The user post shows contents where they replied in someone's thread. I am wanting a way to just see the threads a user post. For example you have close to 1000 posts. I'll bet less then 50 threads. Much easier
T

Some high post count contributors hardly ever start a thread of their own.

Use a variety of 'best guess' keywords and include their user name. The more time you spend searching, the better you will get at it, but...

The older a post is and the more complex the subject, the more likely it is that the poster has moved on from what was posted at the time.

[Yummyrum]

The google search on this forum is now totally screwed .

Even NZChris’s method

site:homedistiller.org/forum/

shows nothing anymore . Google seems to have completely destroyed the way it searches .

It is almost impossible to find anything on this site anymore .

Anyone have a method that works ?

[Copperhead road]

The google search on this forum is now totally screwed .

Even NZChris’s method

site:homedistiller.org/forum/

shows nothing anymore . Google seems to have completely destroyed the way it searches .

It is almost impossible to find anything on this site anymore .

Anyone have a method that works ?

The same thing is happening to me yummy, it doesn’t matter how I try to search.
SW_Shiner said it works for him but it seems very odd it can work for some and not for others.

Is there any way Uncle Jessie could fix this?

What could have caused it to totally screw up I wonder…

[NZChris]

site:homedistiller.org/forum/

It works with Duckduckgo and Bing

https://duckduckgo.com/?origin=funnel_h ... ols&ia=web

[Yummyrum]

Now funny thing is , the Google search still works extremely well for one forum I use and to a lesser degree to another . It is just weird how it is a complete nogo for HD forum . It’s as if it has been blocked from searching this forum .

As for Bing and Duckduckgo . Good to know Chris .
I have never liked bing so haven’t used it at all since it would hijack everything .
Nit sure about Duckduckgo . It looks like you need a subscription to use it ??? Is that the case ?

[NZChris]

If the link worked, you don’t need a subscription. I’ve never had one.

[NZChris]

Even while the Google search tool was working properly, I felt I got better results from typing my query into the URL. When Google stopped working on the site, I gravitated to using duckduckgo, a search engine I had used in the past.

I tried using Bing and it's results were ok too.

There might be better search engines available, but I haven't done the surfing required to find them. To find them, you either have to search for them yourself, or wait for someone else to do the work for you and spoon feed it to where you will find it.

[Bushman]

I guess I am just lazy in my old age. When I was younger and before Google became the main search I would search other formats such as Yahoo. Never tried DuckDuckGo or Bing but will give it a go.

[NormandieStill]

I guess I am just lazy in my old age. When I was younger and before Google became the main search I would search other formats such as Yahoo. Never tried DuckDuckGo or Bing but will give it a go.

Yup. Before they turned into the evil empire, Google was a breath of fresh air after AltaVista, Yahoo and AskJeeves. (Or the equally common approach at the time of "typing in the address that a friend has given you, or that you'd read about in a magazine").

[SW_Shiner]

The google search on this forum is now totally screwed .

Even NZChris’s method

site:homedistiller.org/forum/

shows nothing anymore . Google seems to have completely destroyed the way it searches .

It is almost impossible to find anything on this site anymore .

Anyone have a method that works ?

The same thing is happening to me yummy, it doesn’t matter how I try to search.
SW_Shiner said it works for him but it seems very odd it can work for some and not for others.

Is there any way Uncle Jessie could fix this?

What could have caused it to totally screw up I wonder…

Searching 'sugar' in the google search box now gives me only 1 result. I predominantly use the forum search box, which is still working fine for me.

[contrahead]

The google search on this forum is now totally screwed .

Yummyrum reopened this thread and this can of worms.

I believe the problem is related to a broader phenomenon - called or refereed to as, "enshittification".
Look up the word for an explanation.

"Enshittification"

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infin ... tification

https://medium.com/@techie.fellow/the-e ... 9616f22050

[NZChris]

The google search on this forum is now totally screwed .

Yummyrum reopened this thread and this can of worms.

I believe the problem is related to a broader phenomenon - called or refereed to as, "enshittification".
Look up the word for an explanation.

"Enshittification"

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infin ... tification

https://medium.com/@techie.fellow/the-e ... 9616f22050

I have to agree with that. It's nice to have a word to describe it at last.

It's getting ever harder to find what you are looking for using Google or any of the web crawlers that used to serve me well pre-something, maybe Covid, maybe AI. There is far more effort being put into targetting sales prospects rather than serving up what the user might actually be looking for using the key words they typed into their query.

[kennstminet]

Using any browser and typing

Code: Select all

sugar site:homedistiller.org

returns a large number of findings. The forums "Google Search ..." should do the same.
It not, there is a technical problem with the forum software or its settings.

[Yummyrum]

Using any browser and typing

Code: Select all

sugar site:homedistiller.org

returns a large number of findings. The forums "Google Search ..." should do the same.
It not, there is a technical problem with the forum software or its settings.

Putting that in my phone , I get this Kenn ….only one link to HD

IMG_3305.jpeg

[kennstminet]

Thanks for the feedback.
Using my iPhone and Firefox, I get tons of findings. Same with Safari.
However, I'm not using Google as the search engine. With Firefox, I use Startpage and with Safari I use DuckDuckGo as search engine.

When I open the Google website and use their search function, I get only one result. Exactly as you described.
It seems to be a Google issue rather than a Forum problem.

I don't understand whats going on. I believe both of my search engines get their results at the end from Google.

[Homebrewer11777]

Did same search from chrome and got this

image.png

clicking that purple link...
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

gives me many many hits on HD

[kennstminet]

Hey, that it!

Things get easier after reading the notes displayed.

[kennstminet]

Using the Forum Google search does not offer that "repeat search" option.
As a workaround, change the sort by setting from Relevance to Date and all the desired results appear.

[Yummyrum]

Did same search from chrome and got this

image.png

clicking that purple link...
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

gives me many many hits on HD

Thanks Homebrewer
I didn’t scroll down enough to see that .
OK so this time I did and Boom , there were pages of HD hits .

So I thought I would try searching for a topic SBB did years ago . It is called “Old school Bubbler Build” .But I didn’t know that .

I searched on Dudkduckgo “ SBB’s 4” build “
Duckduck found it an is about the 5-6th hit .

IMG_3307.jpeg

So knowing that google was still working , I tried the same search .
Nudda

IMG_3308.jpeg

Now I knew the exact topic name , I searched that on google .

Still nothing .

IMG_3309.jpeg

So although I apparently wasn’t using google search properly ,it would seem that duckduckgo is providing a better search than google .