Old forum archive - last chance to save your old PM's!

[glyn.hudson]

All URLs will auto-redirect, see my post above for example:

Old forum archive - last chance to save your old PM's!

As you know we are moving towards taking down out old Drupal 6 site which is EOL and a security risk to keep running on our servers. As you have probably noticed we have launched a new home page and moved the building block resources to a new Learn site, see blog post. The old forums have now been converted to a static html site, any URL’s which point to old forum threads will be re-directed to the static archive e.g https://openenergymonitor.org/emon/forum will re-direct to: https://openene…

The Drupal PHP search never really worked very well. As before the best way to search the old forums is using google.

[Gwil]

@calypso_rae

Is there a link to get to the old forum from this new Community place?

Yes, there should be a button labelled “Archived”; here is how it should look.

[calypso_rae (Robin Emley)]

@glyn.hudson

As before the best way to search the old forums is using google.

How can Google be instructed to search only that particular location? Normally, a Search Engine searches the whole web. IMHO, the old forum is a treasure trove of useful information, and I have always found its associated Search facility to be excellent. I have yet to warm to this new place …

[daturach]

@calypso_rae
Something like this (adjust accordingly):

“calypso_rae” PV Diverter 3-phase PCB site:openenergymonitor.org

[Robert.Wall]

@calypso_rae

the old forum is a treasure trove of useful information

I’ve already said that a few times.

[glyn.hudson]

Totally agree, the old forum as been converted to a static site so it can be treasured forever. I will look at adding a custom google search box to the site.

[calypso_rae (Robin Emley)]

Wow, this is just what I was hoping for. It’s presumably searching both the old forum and the new one.
“smarter ways” site:openenergymonitor.org
Thanks

[daturach]

Yes,the new and the old.
You can exclude the new one if you like:

“calypso_rae” site:openenergymonitor.org -site:community.openenergymonitor.org

[glyn.hudson]

Thanks to @Gwil a Google Custom Search box has been added to the bottom of all forum-archive pages

https://openenergymonitor.org/forum-archive/index.html

This search box only searches the old (archive) forum.

[Bill.Thomson]

Here’s some additional info on using Google search that may help when searching the old forum.

[Paul (Paul Reed)]

@glyn.hudson

This search box only searches the old (archive) forum.

Does it need some sort of description, to let users know that it only searches the old (archive) forum, or is it fair to assume?

Paul

[Robert.Wall]

A good question. If you know you’re effectively in a different place and you went there via the Archive button, I think it’s fair to assume that it searches only where you are at that moment. But if you got there directly or you don’t realise that you’re in the old, unmaintained place, then that assumption becomes questionable.

What argument applies to the search here? That doesn’t search the old forum, whereas I would have expected that it would - because of the link via the Archive button. Maybe that ought to be made clear somehow (in the mouse hover?).

The archive search is “below the fold” for me. Is the foot of the page - even below what looks suspiciously like a footer - the best place?