Why is searching the Addons database so painful on this site?

Supposedly, I'm supposed to be able to do searches for the addons curse.com has tagged with "wotlk" (which, of course, I can't). I can use the link from the Addons page to list all the "wotlk" tagged addons, but that gives me an unusable list of 250 addons on 5 pages that can't even be sorted by most recent update! I can't see what any of the addons do without going to the main page for that addon and then back to the gigantic useless list.

If I attempt to search for features of an addon I'm looking for, I may or may not get lucky that the author put the feature in the name of the addon, since that will be the only way to use the search field and get where i want to go. However, even that is not a reliable method (just try searching for the ag_unitframes without typing in the actual name, I dare you). So, if you are looking for an addon but don't know the name or searching for a replacement for an addon that has specific features, you have to use google and hope like hell you stumble upon the magic text or phrase that will link you to an appropriate Curse page.

Is it really that hard to get a search engine to work, or have the ability to search keywords/features, or be able to sort lists of addon links, or put partial descriptions in the search results page? I don't get it, can someone please explain it to me like I was a ten-year-old?

LOL, welcome to the world that is Curse. Yup the search / sort / description / etc.... is terrible. Hopefully they will at some point in time take the whole 20 minutes needed to code a sort algorithm.

Here's a tip. Get someone else to go do the searching for you (like someone in your guild) then tell them what you should download. And if it's not on the front-page, don't bother, it's going to take you more time to find it than the time it will save you if you use it.

when I have some words/terms instead of an addon name to search, here's what I do:

Open browser and go to google.

Type in the search terms of interest

Add a space and the following (without the quotes)

"site:curse.com"

This works like a charm

DigitalSorceress good idea using the Google site search to help with Curses terrible search. I think what thetattoo is looking for, like most of us, is an easier way to sort (arrange) our search results. If you use any kind of search the results become unsortable. Bad Curse. Their search algorithm looks to only handle one type of query at a time and the sort field seems to be handled like a search so it's one or the other. It's not hard to add a few lines of code to allow for result sorting. Now let's just get them to do it.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Blayneld

Here's a tip. Get someone else to go do the searching for you (like someone in your guild) then tell them what you should download. And if it's not on the front-page, don't bother, it's going to take you more time to find it than the time it will save you if you use it.

Do you mean "ask them what you should download"?

I generally know what features I want when I go looking for an addon and other people's opinions rarely are useful when I know what I need.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by teek5449

DigitalSorceress good idea using the Google site search to help with Curses terrible search. I think what thetattoo is looking for, like most of us, is an easier way to sort (arrange) our search results. If you use any kind of search the results become unsortable. Bad Curse. Their search algorithm looks to only handle one type of query at a time and the sort field seems to be handled like a search so it's one or the other. It's not hard to add a few lines of code to allow for result sorting. Now let's just get them to do it.

Here! Here!

  Quote:

Originally Posted by DigitalSorceress

when I have some words/terms instead of an addon name to search, here's what I do:

 

Open browser and go to google.

Type in the search terms of interest

Add a space and the following (without the quotes)

"site:curse.com"

 

This works like a charm

 

thank you. the most useful advice i have yet received.

Lol, i was just aboutt o post about not being able to sort by date. In mozilla it just refreshes the page. In IE it brings up an error page. I love  this site for the addons on it and being one of the more eye-satisfying sites but it can be hard to search for addons at times.

I don't know if it is because I'm a Mod or because I've been using Curse for years but I'm not having that much trouble finding what I am looking for.

What kind of problems are you guys having when it comes to looking for addons? 

Positive Feedback is Positive and typically leads to positive results. 

OH, well our problem is when we click the WotLK add-ons link on the addon page, It gives us a list in no particular order. It'd be awesome if we could sort them by date last updated (or atleast name). Thanks for asking.

Hmm..  Clicking on the collumn headers don't sort the list like you would expect, they just drop you to a "Page Not Found".  More than likely a bug.  Let me forward this to the devs and see if they have an answer.

In Firefox, it just refreshes the page. Thanks again for looking into this.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Eldredd

I don't know if it is because I'm a Mod or because I've been using Curse for years but I'm not having that much trouble finding what I am looking for.

What kind of problems are you guys having when it comes to looking for addons? 

Positive Feedback is Positive and typically leads to positive results. 

If you look at my original post, I outline some of the issues I have with using the Addons section of Curse.com, but here is an explicit list of the features I would love to see that I doubt require reworking the entire site:

1. All search results pages should have the ability to sort by Updated Date, Name, Popularity (Hits), or Category. (the dream is that you would be able to do consecutive sorts so that the most recently updated items could be sorted by popularity, but that is the dream).

2. When you mouse over a link to an addon page in the search results page, a little tooltip popup gives a brief description of the addon from either the toc or some data the dev puts in.

3. Common search strings should pick up all relevant results. I can't do searches for terms that apply to a range of mods and get a list of possible candidates. I only get the apparently random set of results Curse thinks are relevant. When i search for a common term, such as "unit frames," i should get results that include all the addons that have those two strings in the title, category or description. As it stands, I get additional items if I type in "unitframes" instead. [Again, i dare you to find AG_Unitframes without typing in the first three characters. Pretend you have never seen ag_unitframes, don't know what it is, and are looking for a unit frame replacement mod. What search strings would you use to find it? "unit frames" doesn't get it. Neither does "unitframes," a string which is the Category AND in the Title for pete's sake! You can't click on the category of other results and get a list of similar mods, so HOW would find it?]

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Davidjohn

In Firefox, it just refreshes the page. Thanks again for looking into this.

This is confirmed, I used IE at work which gave the page not found error.  I use FF At home and it refreshes the page.

Now if I go to http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/categories/action-bars.aspx for instance it seems to work fine.

I click the headers and it sorts like it should.  I wonder if this problem may be specific to the WOTLK page.  I don't have time right now to go through all the different pages and see what pops up.  

If you go to http://wow.curse.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?q=fubar it seems to be working fine though the search isn't very robust.  I'm not sure (I'm just a forum mod) if the devs have plans to add a more robust search.

I mouse over the titles and I get a popup with information about the addon.  This happens fine on all pages with the exception of the WOTLK page.  I'm not sure what is going on with that page but it's the only one I continuously am finding problems with.

Ok, so check this out.  I just tried http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/tags/fubar/default.aspx and have the same symptoms.  (I'm screwing around with this real time while I am typing this reply).

So it's something that is up with the pages that are generated from the tags system.

To respond to the search, I have no clue what's going on there.  Like I said above, I can't tell you if a more robust search is planned or not. 

I'll forward this to the devs and either give you an answer when they answer me, or they could even respond in this thread themselves.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Davidjohn

OH, well our problem is when we click the WotLK add-ons link on the addon page, It gives us a list in no particular order. It'd be awesome if we could sort them by date last updated (or atleast name). Thanks for asking.

There actually is a particular order to it.  The list is sorted by popularity.  Why can't you sort in other ways?  Because it's something we threw together in about 30 minutes when patch hit since no support for something like that exists in community server by default.

Will you be implementing the sorting in other parts of the site, like the serch results area?

Has all gone quiet on this topic? I'm still waiting to be able to sort my search results (which apparently is already a feature of the site, just not implemented for searches???!!!)

The ability to sort search results should be going in with the next major update to the site.