TAY Atmosphere

the search function could use a tuneup.  in preparing a topic, and searching for info here about Ed Rundle and Jim Mates,  Ed shows up extensively as the past tense of many words, ie  xxxxed,  the only mention of Rundle comes from Zap's and Markharf's frequent use of 'trundle', and Mates, besides in boot fitting threads, shows up primarily as 'estiMates'...    

Also, about the previous post, I've changed my mind about an 'ignore' button - not a great idea.  Feel the same about a moderation-free zone.  It's all about the vibe throughout all the corners around here - not that everything said needs to be repeatable in church..   

As with many things on this forum (and everywhere else), the search works best if you know how to use it properly: if you're looking for "ed rundle" exactly, then searching for it in quotes finds what you want immediately. "jim mates" actually seems to work OK without the quotes, but adding the quotes helps if you want only the exact phrase.

Also, by default the search shows "Most recent topics first", but setting it to "Most relevant results first" often gives much better results in situations where your search terms partially match a lot of unintended words.

You can also search within TAY using Google: just add site:turns-all-year.com to your search terms (must have no space after "site:" in order to work), see this example .

Perhaps Marcus could also add a Google search box on the search page? It's really easy to do, I've had it on the Site Map page on my website for many years. That will automatically search only within the site listed. Here is the HTML code that I used, revised to work on TAY, and also giving the option to search the entire website or just the forums:

[tt]<B>Search Turns All Year using Google:</B> <BR><BR>
<FORM METHOD="GET" ACTION=" www.google.com/custom"> ;
<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="q" SIZE="31" MAXLENGTH="255">
<INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" NAME="sa" VALUE="Google Search">
<INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="cof" VALUE="LW:75;L:http://www.turns-all-year.com/tayshad75.gif;LH:75;AH:left;S:http://www.turns-all-year.com/;">
<INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="domains" VALUE="turns-all-year.com"><BR><BR>
<INPUT TYPE="RADIO" VALUE="turns-all-year.com" NAME="sitesearch" CHECKED> Search all of turns-all-year.com  
<INPUT TYPE="RADIO" VALUE="turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboarding/trip_reports" NAME="sitesearch"> Search Turns All Year forums only
</FORM>
[/tt]

A working example of that code is at www.skimountaineer.com/Tools/TAY-Search.html -- the box on that page will Google search TAY

ok, fine, so I'm what needed the tuneup..       but you've got to admit that my method was more fun..  if less efficient.  thanks for the tip

Brilliant Amar... thanks very much for doing the leg work on that and for spelling out the more accurate (less fun ) ways to search the site.

Maybe this cool search tip (and I would imagine there are others) could be added to the search page in one of those text boxes. I doubt many people know these cool tricks, I had heard the one about site: on Google but the " " is pretty cool and helpful.

The 10 years and counting of TRs is really quite a resource and if taken as a whole I wonder if it amounts to the best regional ski guidebook in the world. Is there anything out there better?

In my view making this resource as accessible and usable as possible is as important as ever.

I’m not inclined to dump the lift-accessed stuff at this time, as it has its place and serves a good purpose. 

Heck yeah, leave it. Over 5,000 posts. I don't understand the dump it mentality. No one's asking to dump shop for gear or road conditions. It's easy to skip what you don't want to read.

I generally like the site layout just fine, as others have said if you're not interested in something don't read it. I do find lift serve reports useful, as there tend to be more of those posted mid week and it still gives a good idea of snow conditions, even for bc planning. I don't support a separate snow, weather, Avy section because that is what I read the trip reports to find out about, and those inclined to provide it usually include this in the tr. No need to dilute this source to two areas IMO.

And thanks Marcus for keeping things going-