I want to search for a phrase in WbA ["looking glass"], but I can't find a way to search for phrases on DLP any more. Does anyone know how to do this?

Every search variation I've tried will show results which contain either looking or glass, but not both together. I'd try a Google search of DLP, but the WbA forum is restricted to members only, so Google doesn't index it. I'd be happy if I could just get a boolean search to look for the words "looking" and "glass", not as a phrase, but at least with both words in the same post.

I've been googling for vBulletin's boolean search syntax online, but I can't get it to work here. Perhaps my usergroup doesn't have permission to do boolean searches. I'm stumped.

This is what I've tried:

I've used the terms "buckbeak" and "scrimgeour" because they're both relatively common, won't appear in the same post very frequently, and should never appear directly adjacent to each other. That makes them ideal to test whether or not I can get a boolean AND operation to work.

Using the Advanced Search forum, I've tried:

buckbeak scrimgeour
+buckbeak +scrimgeour
buckbeak AND scrimgeour
(buckbeak scrimgeour)
"buckbeak scrimgeour"
buckbeak#scrimgeour

and every time I received the exact same search results, as though I'd searched for buckbeak AND OR scrimgeour

Here's the URL I've been using to search in WbA without the form.

http://forums.darklordpotter.net/search.php?do=process&forumchoice[]=11&searchtype=1&query=buckbeak+scrimgeour

&forumchoice[]=11 points the search to WbA
&query=buckbeak is for the search term buckbeak
&searchtype=1 which should perform a boolean search, but doesn't seem to work.

&query=buckbeak gets me 22 threads
&query=scrimgeour 57 threads
&query=buckbeak+scrimgeour 76 threads
&query=buckbeak+AND+scrimgeour 76 threads
&query=buckbeak#scrimgeour 22 threads [same as searching for query=buckbeak]

...so there should be 3 threads with posts which contain both scrimgeour and buckbeak in the WbA subforum. Note that all of these search results exclude any content from WbA child boards.

I'm sure that I used to be able to perform boolean searches on DLP, but the method, syntax, or permissions appear to have changed. If anyone knows the trick, I'd love to know it. I'll kick myself if it's something simple.

 

No dice. It's the same as: looking glass

 

Weird. I get the 800+ search results no matter how I try it. I copy pasted the search terms straight from your post. I thought it might be some browser fuckery, but Chrome behaved the same way as Opera.

 

I hope you mean "looking glass".

Have you tried the symbol boolean operators instead of the text? (&& for AND, || for OR)

I get 367 results searching for "looking && glass" in WBA (and child forums). (With or without quotes doesn't seem to make a difference.)

 

Actually, no. Mispelling "lookign glass" as Oz did still nets me the same results as the correct spelling.

I'd tried &, but not && or ||. Sadly they have no effect. It's the same as just searching for "looking glass"

 

That is bizarre.

Maybe I'm misremembering, but I could have sworn we used to be able to do AND searches. Something like:

+buckbeak +scrimgeour

to pull up posts which contained both terms.