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I put this in the Feedback and then thought I'd put it here, too.
I think it'd be very helpful if you had a search box up in the header, or at the top of the page every page. I see it on many pages. The place I missed it the most was on the homepage. I came to the network the other day wondering if someone had written anything about a specific topic and since search wasn't on the home page I kind of had to search around for it - haha.
If you don't like the idea of having it on every page, at least adding it to the homepage would be great.
Mavis
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I had the same experience today. I started at the home page. I didn't see what I was looking for, so then I clicked on "see more" (which brought me here: http://network.crcna.org/discussion-networks ) and there isn't a search box there either. If you don't know exactly what you're looking for or which forum it might be in, having a search box up front is helpful. Thanks!
I think you're both right. Part of the problem is the fact that we actually have two different search tools right now - one that searches guide content and another that searches the forums.
On our roadmap, we've added a project to look at replacing both with Google custom search (which we use on CRCNA.org). We've got a few projects ahead of that one, but hopefully it won't be too long.
Once we've got one, universal search tool it will make it easier to display throughout the site. With the growth we've been seeing on The Network this fall, search will become more and more important.
Keep the suggestions coming! We're listening closely and suggestions like this help make the site better for everyone.
Thanks for the update, Tim. I didn't realize that there were two different search functions, so perhaps I need to try my searches again, making sure I hit both areas of content.
It seems like if I'm on the main page of a content area (for example: http://network.crcna.org/content/web) and search there, I get results from the guide content, and can clearly choose to search in that area or "all" areas.
My follow up question is, when I search from a forum page (for example: http://network.crcna.org/forums/web/,) does that search all forums or just the one I'm in? If it's just the one, is there a way now to search the entire forum?
The forum search box will search all forums. If we implement Google custom search as an all-in-one search tool we'd be sure to have the ability to filter the results by guided content vs. forums (much as you can filter search results on CRCNA.org by ministry area - example). Maybe we could even allow people to filter by all 50-or-so Network sections.
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