Moodle documentation: Searching docs.moodle.org

Moodle documentation: Searching docs.moodle.org

by John Isner -
Number of replies: 6
Question: What's the best way to search http://docs.moodle.org?
Answer: http://www.google.com

At this is true in my experience. Even when I know the exact title of a page, e.g., "CVS for developers," a wiki search may tell me "No page title matches" and then give me hundreds of "page text matches." The page I'm looking for often in the list (for "CVS for developers, it was number 42 -- see screenshot), but by the time I've scanned the firsts few entries, I've quit and gone to Google.

With Google, I can type

moodle "CVS for developers"

and press the "I'm feeling lucky" button. It will take me directly to the page I'm looking for.

Is this a MediaWiki problem, or is there something we can do (e.g., when adding documentation) to facilitate better searching?

Attachment cvs_for_developers.png
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Moodle documentation: Searching docs.moodle.org

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
John > Question: What's the best way to search http://docs.moodle.org?
Answer: http://www.google.com

Yet another example of the "power of Google".wink

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Moodle documentation: Searching docs.moodle.org

by John Isner -
What about replacing the Search block on the front page of docs.moodle.org by a Google search block like the one on the front page of moodle.org? Configure it to search only docs.moodle.org.

Forum search in the moodle.org courses is almost as useless, and Advanced forum search is cumbersome to use. I use Google for all my searches. Why suffer?

If forum searches and documentation searches worked better, the number of redundant forum posts would drop significantly.
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Moodle documentation: Searching docs.moodle.org

by John Isner -
I created two issues
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Moodle documentation: Searching docs.moodle.org

by Jan Dierckx -

John,

I agree the forum search is pretty useless, partly because a lot of posts contain big chunks of code. They show up in a lot of search results.

About searching Moodle docs: if you are using IE7 or Firefox 2, you can install a search plugin for Moodle Docs via Google inspired by your suggestion.

It's also possible to set up Firefox (and IE6 !) to allow direct searches from the location bar, where one would normally type a url.

Some old documentation is here

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In reply to Jan Dierckx

Re: Moodle documentation: Searching docs.moodle.org

by John Isner -
Hi Jan,

partly because a lot of posts contain big chunks of code

and partly because of the popularity of misspellings like "Moolde" and "SCROM" smile

Another reason: if people can't find what they're looking for in a forum search, they'll often post to an inappropriate forum. This is causing our forums to become less and less cohesive. This, in turn, makes it even harder to know where to look.

I have also created Google custom search engines. I have used them as browser plugins, and I have also pasted one into an html block on the front page of my site. These help me and my users, but not the users who come to docs.moodle.org.

Here's a good article on how to add a Google search box to a Web page and here's a forum discussion about it.
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