searching for shape numbers by number

Last night I discovered motiontopic, not sure if it is connected to forumotion or not, but as we can't use this site to search for numbers, this one may be useful. I searched for just the number 170, and up came some of our swan posts. Now, this will only work if the number was in the title of the post or topic, so it is not 100%, but better than nothing. You can also search word items, such as hand potted and this is the result, so if you start here you can search for anything http://culture.motiontopic.net/s/crown-lynn-hand-potted . I tried starting with just the home page, but it is difficult to go by category so I just continue from this url, however it will include results from other websites too, which could be a good and bad thing. Once you select a post, the 'read more' button will take you to the post on our site here (if it came from here of course) Have fun!  

Anne, You can search numbers on site using the Search button in the top menu.
It can spit a lot of gallery entries at you but it doesn't take much work to sift through them.
Advanced search option.

It doesn't work if you only use the number and no description Jeremy, e.g. if you only enter 170, plus you may not wish to search just your own entries, or topics that are up to 1 year old. if you want to find a vase that was posted to the site 3 years ago, and only know the number, but not author etc, there are no results. The other site does not always return a result, but is helpful, it is up to the individual how they search, I just found it helpful.

It does work. I do it all the time. Number only. BUT I think it requires FOUR digits,
which might not be so good for you, Anne, as I guess you need to search just three a lot.

Follow the instructions below. Don't be tempted to do anything else.
1 Click "Search" button in top menu
2 Click "Advanced Search", THEN...
3 Type your number in the top box on the new display, AND
4 Click "Search" button (NOT the "Search Google" button)

(At point 2 above you get a choice of "Topic" or "Posts".
It is better to change to topics if it is not preset already as posts gives you the whole post which could be a drag because you get multiple copies of the gallery.)

The following is the result from my search for 1074 this morning:


I just did another test on 1078 as I was writing this. No problems.

 You misunderstand my searching Jeremy, I am talking about searching on just the NZ Pottery Forum, not a google search.

No, I got you.

It is all done on the forum.

The results come from google, that's all.

Google has the site backed up.
The forum search engine searches through google's backups for results from the forum only.

All results are on the forum.

Rather interesting as I haven't tried that Advanced Search option before.
I usually just go to Google to find numbers on the site and it works well, but now I can see another more specific way of searching, as you say the results are just from this site, but through Google.
I know there is code that you can use to search on google with 'site:' or something to do just that, but I haven't had any luck with it.
I think Forumotion have set this up to cover their useless at times search engine.

Ev,
if you look at my photo above you can see that this search option AUTOMATICALLY inserts that "code", which simply becomes a "word" in a google search. It is in the search window in the photo above.

THE CODE

The "code" is not set up by forumotion; it is all google.
You can search on ANY site that Google sends it's bots to.

The "code" is "site:" plus the site URL, thus for us it is:

site:newzealandpottery.forumotion.net

You don't need to copy or type all that in if you use the option and instructions I wrote above for searching on the forum.

FOUR CHARACTERS vs THREE ... OR FEWER

Fortunately for me, I deal mostly in four digit numbers so this works for me, but it does not work with THREE digits. I have noticed that three LETTER word searches don't work within the forum either, and I think some common words don't work.

I guess the designers of the forum search engine made a call that only three digits or letters would produce too many results.

USING THE CODE ON GOOGLE

I found that while a three digit search does not work on the forum,
using the same set of digits plus the "code" DOES WORK ON GOOGLE.

My test search ON GOOGLE was:

183 site:newzealandpottery.forumotion.net

Amazingly so does a TWO DIGIT search, eg:

27 site:newzealandpottery.forumotion.net

AND, even a SINGLE DIGIT search, eg

9 site:newzealandpottery.forumotion.net

ALSO,

A search for the three-letter word "pen" fails on the forum but the same search, with the "code" succeeds on google, ie

pen site:newzealandpottery.forumotion.net

This same search also gives results for "pens", but not "penultimate" or "open".
Likewise "orz site:newzealandpottery.forumotion.net" does not give the results for Orzel.

I don't know how to search for part-words on Google but someone will. An asterisk (eg orz* for Orzel) does not work.


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Another day ...
I think forumotion must have been GLITCHING (as it so often does) when it produced the results above.

I did test it a few times that day and results always came up looking the same.

Following exactly the same routine now I get the usual sort of forumotion results display, not in google format.