FWW Archive Search Mess

erich | Posted in General Discussion on November 5, 2010 11:48am

Hi All, I just sent Taunton a gripe, here’s an excerpt… “I am finally getting around to something I don’t like to do… complain. Why is searching for old FWW articles so difficult on FWW.com?!? Here is the example that really put me over the edge: From the homepage I searched “guide bushings” knowing full well that there is an article in issue #207 titled “Guide to Guide Bushings”. There were a lot of hits, NONE of the entries directly linked to the page for the PDF. That’s screw-up number one (there was a link that took me to a page which then took me to another page to look at the PDF… but WHY doesn’t it come up on the initial entry list?). To narrow the search down I clicked the highlighted text to search Fine Woodworking Magazine Archive under the “Refine Results For…” heading and did it come up? You would think so since it is a FWW magazine article, but NO, there were ZERO results in the archive. Screw-up number two. Not only am I using a search term that is directly from the title, but I KNOW there are other articles, I can think of one from around 2000, that talk about guide bushings.” I went on to say that maybe it’s my fault and I’m not doing something right (but if that’s the case, hey, I’m an intelligent guy, shouldn’t their system be more intuitive?), but that I think their system needs improvement. I’ve noticed this a BUNCH of times, that even if you know the name of an article or the author you can’t find it online. Anybody else found this? Any solutions? Sorry for the long post and Happy Woodworking! Erich

Replies

jack7 | Nov 05, 2010 11:37pm | #1
archive

I know what you are talking about.what fww needs is a user friendly database........filemaker is not helpfull to annyone.

jack7
GEide | Nov 08, 2010 10:00am | #2
Hi Erich,

Thanks for the feedback. You're not the only one. Magazine editors have reported similar issues in recent weeks.

I'm not sure what the issue is but we'll start researching.

Sorry for your trouble. If anyone's really stuck and unable to find an article, pls drop us a line (fw-web at taunton.com) and we can try to help.

BTW... here's the guide bushing article: https://www.finewoodworking.com/ToolGuide/ToolGuidePDF.aspx?id=32809

-Gina, FineWoodworking.com
erich | Nov 11, 2010 11:45am | #3
Gina,

Thanks for the response, and I'm glad to be among the company of the FWW editors in having problems finding the articles. This is not a new problem. I hope the FWW.com leadership is really looking at this. It's not that I couldn't find the article, (but thanks for the link anyway) as I said in my initial post I got to a page that took me to another page that took me to the PDF, but WHY do I have to go through all that? If I use something as relevant as part of the direct title of the article shouldn't that be one of the FIRST hits on the list? Most discouraging is when I want to just search FWW articles, NOT tool reviews or gallery posts, etc... but JUST articles from the magazine. When I searched for this title under those criteria nothing came up. What? So the FWW archive has NO article by that name? Hmmm. Something must be going on, and if you say you and your team are on it then I applaud you! Thanks for your hard work and the content you provide us!

Erich
kQa6ucpX9f | Dec 12, 2010 07:28pm | #4
Amen ! Amen ! Amen ! I feel vindicated

I thought I was the only one going frustratingly insane. The Fine Woodworking SEARCH is horrible !!!!!! I too am looking at an article in hardcopy. I search using the two terms "lower hutch" because I want to see the article on the lower case of a hutch, and it shows no results. Even though the magazine I'm looking at has it RIGHT THERE !

I would advise againt buying their "Indexes" software and their back issues software until this amateurish search algorhythm is brought up to date. You don't have to be Google, but at least you should get a hit on the same string of text you're seeing in print.

Poor.