A couple of forum tweaking suggestions

[-DJ-]

Hi guys.

I don't find the search option as useful as it could be for a couple of reasons.
1. The text displayed below the forum topic can be confusing and even wrong. It often says "Not answered" for example, even though the thread might have many posts/answers.
2. Often you don't see any dates, so you end up looking at threads that are old, outdated, and have no useful info for the current RadControls version.

Also, when searching a forum, you don't get a link directly back to the same forum. You can go to "forums", but not the forum you are currently searching.

Regards,
-DJ-

[Kaloyan Simeonov]

Hello -DJ-,

Thank you for your feedback!

1. We will remove "Not answered" status from results soon, as we consider them confusing too.
2. The search results are sorted by relevance, not by date, as we consider relevance more important for searches.
3. We should consider adding link for the searched forum in the breadcrumb - thus everyone can easily navigate back.

We appreciate your suggestions!

Best Wishes,

Kaloyan

the Telerik team

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[TonyG]

I was really unhappy with the old forum, particularly because searching was very painful.  The searching in the current forum is much better but can certainly be improved.  Heck, just make better use of RadControls !  :)

• Allow filtering to whittle down selections ... "Items 1-10 of 929 results" tells us the query needs to be better.
• Allow user-definable number of items per page - For 929 results I don't want to click to the next page 100 times.
• Put more text from the original query into the results summary.  An entire one line of two is often consumed for a path to where a result is found - we care more about what the entry contains so that we know if it's relevant.
• Yes, the date of a forum posting is highly relevant !  I understand that relevance with regard to what the text selection algorithm returns can be quite high, but an old forum post on a problem that was fixed months to years ago may not be relevant at all to someone struggling with a current issue.  Versatility is the key. So, put the date in the summaries and allow sorting filtered selections by date.
• Reduce the Filter Results by Type into a dropdown list to minimize the wasted screen real-estate.
• Show the entire title with more prominence than the forum name - again, if we're limited on real-estate, this is taking up too much space.

 

For bonus points ... :)

•  Allow more data to be displayed for higher resolution monitors.  I don't want to see a website in 1024x768 mode when I have 1680x1280 and dual monitors.  Blast my screen with data all at once so that I can mimize hits to your obviously heavily burdened server(s).
• Ah yes - and it would help if searches were faster.  If we're sharing servers for forum, demos, and the general site then we're all overloading it for the other guys.  Fast searches means fast development, that keeps costs down, and that keeps clients happy and buying more software.  It's all related...
• Allow adding ratings to postings so that we can use those as part of our own determination of relevance.  I'd be more interested in a highly rated thread than one that has no responses, or one that has a lot of chatter but wasn't rated well.
• Add a "related to" area so that we in the field can try to relate threads to one another.  This way a thread that may not get a high relevance score in search results may still lead us to something that is relevant.  Look at it like community breadcrumbs that we drop behind us for our poor colleagues who may be looking for answers to the same issues as ourselves.  Time and again I wish I could link threads together without actually posting an additional note that bumps the thread to the top of the recent list.
• Allow for posting small images so that we can show issues with skins or controls - a picture can be worth a thousand words.

 

OK, that's enough outta me for now.  Thanks.

[Kalina]

Hi Tony,

Our internal web team is planning for customizations to the search to help raise its usability and performance.
We will consider and discuss internally all improvements that you outline.

Thanks for taking the time to put up such an extensive link, and provide us with reasoning and detailed explanations behind your proposal.

1000 points were added to your profile as a sign of gratitude for your feedback.

Kind regards,

Kalina
the Telerik team

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