Advanced Member Search NOT working

[Mark lennox]

Hi All, 

The advanced search feature is not working on mine and many other (if not all) ning sites. 

Basically any free text search field used returns 0 results even through there are members

Also I actually try to hide away the member search because it's too clunky and unhelpful. For e.g. there's no way of performing 'OR' search for members. In other words if you tick two boxes it will try to find members with both criteria not either. 

I'd like to hear what your thoughts are please and also I'd like to hear from Ning to see what development is planned for this critical area of the platform. 

Really looking forward to hearing some feedback,

Best

Mark 

[Eric Suesz]

Hey, Mark. We have a few reports of this and have collected them for our engineers in a bug report. I appreciate your report here, and I will add it to the mix. Hoping we can get this solved. This may be related to profile question answers not appearing in search correctly. 

[Mark lennox]

Ok thanks Eric. 

And are there any further thoughts on improving the searching system i.e. enabling OR searches for tick box terms etc? 

Many thanks 

[Eric Suesz]

No plans to improve search right now, but I think that type of suggestion may be gaining more traction lately. 

[Eric Suesz]

Update: We have two issues with search, and one of them has been fixed. We just fixed one that prevented some results from advanced search from appearing. For example, one line answers, multiple-choice answers, longer answers.

This may or may not have resolved your issue. Hard to know for sure without more info, but if you've submitted a ticket, one of my colleagues should be getting back to you with an official word. 

[Mark lennox]

Thanks Eric. 

In that case as creators is there anything we can do to make advanced search more user friendly?  

[Eric Suesz]

I don't think so. Not sure what you have in mind that NCs themselves could do to make something more user friendly? Not sure I follow. 

[Mark lennox]

Something a little more like LinkedIN. It starts with being able to create a proper profile with encouragements to add more information. The better the profile, the more able you to search it. Then members can truly search out one another, do business, make friends etc. 

I really feel this is the no.1 reason why Ning may fall down.