rex

There have been a number of posts of late... all connected, directly or indirectly to the inability to find certain posts, especially one's own posts. Newcomers do not intuitively know about "click on your own name". For reasons I cannot understand, Fodors does not include this in the FAQs, and misses one key opportunity (or actually two) to teach this simple tip to new users... 1) inform them in that e-mail they send out to confirm a new registration - - could be totally automatic... and 2) as soon as a new registrant makes a new post, generate an e-mail to the registrant, containing the URL for "click on your own name" - - this could be easily programmed.

But it must surely be confusing to newcomers that "SEARCHing on your own name" does NOT work, at least not for anything posted in the past twelve days! They have to "index" the database every so often (daily, or hourly would be best), otherwise the search engine doesn't have a "tag" (identifying individual threads) to look for, when searching for a word or combination of words.

It really is a turn-off to new registrants, in particular. Perhaps they reason that new registrants <u>just bought</u> a (Fodor's) book of some kind - - and they aren't all that likely to buy more soon (rather cynical of me, huh?)

Well, I hope that someone there has heard of the value of <b><i>repeat business</i></b>.

I'll email this thread to [email protected] - - I urge you to do the same, if you are reading this.

Best wishes,

Rex

Robespierre

rex -

There are techniques that could be applied to the design of the Fodor's back-end database that would completely obviate the requirement for &quot;indexing&quot; it, providing near-instantaneous response.

I used to work in the Sabre programming department AA. We could service 98% of requests within .5 second, and that with one-half megabyte of memory and 15,000 users on line, so I think I know whereof I speak.

I agree completely about clicking on one's name (although I discovered it the second I noticed it was a hyperlink).

Marianna

I emailed Fodor's editors this weekend because I was so fed up trying to find ahotpoet's Sorrento post and another one about Portugal.

Here's the reply email I got today:

Yep, there is a glitch to be sure. We will be overhauling and improving the
search engine in the coming months. I apologize for your frustration. Putting
a poster's screen name doesn't work but if you ever see that poster on
another thread (which happens often since most of the time users have a niche
area) you can click on their screen name and a new screen will pop up with
all of their postings. I hope this helps. Thanks for using the forums!
Fodors.com

elaine

I've been finding that one clicking on someone's name and more recent postings aren't coming up, hitting Refresh often works.

Robespierre

I have noticed that clicking on my name next to Welcome: at the top of the screen produces one result, then clicking on it at the top of the left-hand column creates another, and clicking it again results in a third.

rex

I believe that the &quot;different results&quot; and the need to refresh... that elaine describes... are one phenomenon in the same. The site seems to cache the results of &quot;screen_name=&quot; and maybe three or four deep?

Robespierre

screen_name= (and all of the other &amp; parameters in the URL string) are passed to the application whose name follows /forums/

There would be no reason to cache them. I think what is happening is that the user's browser caches the results under the same URL each time such that a refresh has to be forced to get the latest version.

This is why grownups include a session ID as part of the URL so that it is always unique.

Robespierre

In case anyone cares (which is doubtful): the two name links invoke different scripts or programs, and that is why they produce different results:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...erre&amp;fid=2

http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgUser....re&amp;start=0

rex

&lt;&lt;There would be no reason to cache them. I think what is happening is that the user's browser caches the results under the same URL each time&gt;&gt;

Logically, I would believe that your answer makes sense. BUT...

I visit here from my home, and from various hospitals wher I spend time. And this happens... I was online at 11 pm last night, then I was online at 9 am, then at noon - - all from home. Then at 5 pm, I log on from a hospital, where I have not been for a week. And I click on my name and get a result as if it were 11 pm last night. That &quot;result&quot; cannot be cached in this computer's browser. It seems like it has to be on their end.

Likewise, I sometimes get what appears to be a cached result clicking on someone else's name - - that I have never searched before! and I refresh, and I get the &quot;current&quot; results. Seems to me that this points to caching on the server end.

Robespierre

Take a look at the link behind the name you click on when you've been on line for a while and when you haven't been there for a week. I'll be they're different, as in the above example.

rex

I disagree - - the link behind your name is always the same: http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...erre&amp;fid=2 (although it works with or withour the fid=)

It's a query, not a static link.

Robespierre

Anything with .jsp in it is a query. It runs a script, with the parameters starting after the ? and separated by &amp;

The two links cited above run two different scripts, and they do not produce the same output.

Keep your day job.

rex

&lt;&lt;clicking on it at the top of the left-hand column creates another&gt;&gt;

I never click on it &quot;there&quot; - - and thus I have never seen the start=0 (unless I forced it, working backwards from start=50 - - which you get when you click on &quot;next page&quot; as a right click, &quot;Open a new window&quot;; then you can alter the start= to anything you choose, including 0).

I still say, that it seems like THEY are caching...

JBX

TTT

rex

This thread went off on a tangent over whether cahing at the server end or user end was responsible for the (recently increased) need to refresh to get more current posts (especially when doing a &quot;click on your own name&quot.

But my initial complaint has not prompted any action, and now there are a good three weeks of posts not searchable, for lack of indexing.

Perhaps other would be willing to e-mail a copy of this thread to [email protected]

rex

Now, almost a month's worth of posts which cannot be retrieved by &quot;ordinary&quot; use of the &quot;search engine&quot;...

rex

Now six weeks. NOTHING from the past six eeks can be located using the &quot;search&quot; function. Please, please join in a campaign, writing to [email protected]

rex

This thread can now be officially laid to rest (for the time being, at least). The search engine now &quot;works&quot;.

Paraphrasing Toby Keith - -

It might not be good as it oughta be...

But it's good now, as it ever was...