On iStockphoto.com, there is a forum discussion board. We’ve talked about everything under the sun, or at least everything under the site. It is very likely that at some point, you’ll have a question that has already been answered. Searching the forum may bring you an answer quicker than making a new post, and if it something that is asked daily, searching will avoid posting the repetitive question.
At the bottom of the main forum list, and each forum’s list of threads (discussion topics), there is a search bar.
It’s easy enough to type in some words, pick the forum you want (including all forums), and hit search. Unfortunately, the search is not that great in it’s user friendliness.
For one thing, results from the search are non-sortable. They come back in a quasi-newest-to-oldest list, but it’s a bit mangled. The date of last post is listed however.
Also, the search does not really like searches that are more than one word. So you could type in “how to find lost image”, but you’re not going to like the results. What you need to do, is pick the most important word that could be used in what you’re looking for, like “lost”. Well, it didn’t find what we were looking for, but at least all the threads returned seem to be about something lost.
In addition, the search does not particularly like numbers, or words less than three letters.
So, what to do, if you can’t get the forum search to do what you want? Use Google!
It’s easy enough to restrict Google to searching just the iStock forum, and then you can enter the search you’re looking for. Your search of the forums at google would look like this:
site:www.istockphoto.com inurl:forum_messages.php ( your search terms here)
For example, to find the posts in the forum where I have mentioned my buyer tip blog, you could search on this:
site:www.istockphoto.com inurl:forum_messages.php sjlocke “buyer tip” blog
Although the returns aren’t sortable by date, the functionality of multiple words works wonders. I hope this helps you to find your answers quickly!
February 23, 2009 at 3:46 pm |
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