Make searching feature more prominent for new users?

[Momof3Labs]

I see the exact same question come up a lot - sometimes a couple of times a week - usually from newer users. Of course, they want answers to their questions, but by asking a question that was just recently asked, they may not get the same range of answers either. The search feature is what they need, but I'm not sure if everyone is aware of it! Perhaps a message at the top of the screen, when you go to post, reminding people that the search function can turn up a ton of information quickly, without waiting for others to post their responses??

Alan and Denise, any thoughts on this?

[liya]

I have to add to this that when i want to search like before, old old old threads, i just cannot or cant identify how to. I think that the search feature should again be allowed to search older threads as maybe 1 month isnt particularly enough time for the question to show up...

[egoldber]

Yes, I wasdoing a search yesterday and realized that the option to search archived threads is no longer available. PLEASE don't tell me that all that info is gone!!!

[parkersmama]

I'm not sure if this is the solution but I was just changing my timezone info in User Preferences and there is a drop menu for how old (modified date) to show threads. Mine had defaulted to one month. You can choose on it to show up all available threads. I'm not sure if this would fix the problem but it might be worth a try!

[egoldber]

No, unfortunately, the "all available" does not seem to include archived threads. :(

[alandenisefields]

We are going to put up another navigation bar (under the purple band) that includes a quick link to the Advanced Search page. We agree---it should be easier to see that (now just one of several buttons at the top).

As for the archived threads, not sure where they went! We didn't delete them! This will take a bit of detective work.

alan & denise
authors