Search on mobile

[juggsy]

For the past few years when wanting to search the forums on mobile, the only way to do it was to rotate my phone to landscape and the search option appeared.

This has now gone, meaning no way to search the forums on mobile unless going to google and doing a site search. What gives??

[Riley Blue]

I'm still seeing the search option when using my mobile in landscape; it's to the right of the blue bar next to My Stuff, What's New etc.

[illmonkey]

Just use google, add site:Pistonheads.com to the end of your query and it'll only search PH.


Is a 335i (mapped) the best car? site:Pistonheads.com

[juggsy]

Riley Blue said:

I'm still seeing the search option when using my mobile in landscape; it's to the right of the blue bar next to My Stuff, What's New etc.

Not for me

[juggsy]

illmonkey said:

Just use google, add site:Pistonheads.com to the end of your query and it'll only search PH.


Is a 335i (mapped) the best car? site:Pistonheads.com

Yeah I mentioned that in my OP as a less than ideal option. The forum has a search function, should be surfaced without having to resort to complex methods

[Riley Blue]

juggsy said:

Riley Blue said:

I'm still seeing the search option when using my mobile in landscape; it's to the right of the blue bar next to My Stuff, What's New etc.

Not for me

On my Moto G9 Plus and Opera browser:

[juggsy]

Riley Blue said:

On my Moto G9 Plus and Opera browser:

Yeah that’s what I used to have, when you turn to landscape you’re essentially getting the desktop version including the search (I’m iPhone 14 safari browser)

For me now it looks like they’ve created a mobile landscape version, sans search which is deeply annoying. Such a basic feature not to have available

[Scabutz]

juggsy said:

Yeah that’s what I used to have, when you turn to landscape you’re essentially getting the desktop version including the search (I’m iPhone 14 safari browser)

For me now it looks like they’ve created a mobile landscape version, sans search which is deeply annoying. Such a basic feature not to have available

If you go to the browser menu you can select "Request desktop site" and that should show the search bar

https://www.browserstack.com/guide/request-desktop...

[juggsy]

Scabutz said:

If you go to the browser menu you can select "Request desktop site" and that should show the search bar

https://www.browserstack.com/guide/request-desktop...

Sadly not, still shows the mobile site.

Any response from the web team? Why are you hiding such a core feature?

[Riley Blue]

I've just been having a play. 'Search' is always visible in landscape irrespective of whether desktop site is selected or not but in portrait, 'search' is only visible if desktop site is selected when the size of the page zooms out and is too small to read.

[juggsy]

Riley Blue said:

I've just been having a play. 'Search' is always visible in landscape irrespective of whether desktop site is selected or not but in portrait, 'search' is only visible if desktop site is selected when the size of the page zooms out and is too small to read.

How about if you don’t use opera?

[afrere_ph]

Hi juggsy - the search feature is available under the main navigation - Forums > Search forums.



It's worth noting though that this feature is currently only an embedded Google search (due to significant technical issues in the previous implementation making it need to be retired at the time) - reimplementing a fully featured search is on our backlog, however without any immediate timeframe.

As previous commenters have noted, for more detailed results in the meantime, you can leverage the Google search operators to better refine the results.

Cheers

[juggsy]

afrere_ph said:

Hi juggsy - the search feature is available under the main navigation - Forums > Search forums.



It's worth noting though that this feature is currently only an embedded Google search (due to significant technical issues in the previous implementation making it need to be retired at the time) - reimplementing a fully featured search is on our backlog, however without any immediate timeframe.

As previous commenters have noted, for more detailed results in the meantime, you can leverage the Google search operators to better refine the results.

Cheers

Thanks afrere, it’s pretty buried away so never knew there was a link somewhere. Thanks for the pointer, be useful to have something constantly accessible in the toolbar even if it’s google search. Thanks!

[juggsy]

Looks like the mobile search function has disappeared again since the menu bar has had an update. Now there are no drop down menu items, is there a way to access forum search on mobile?

[Zarjaz_1991]

juggsy said:

Looks like the mobile search function has disappeared again since the menu bar has had an update. Now there are no drop down menu items, is there a way to access forum search on mobile?

Only by bookmarking the direct link.

https://www.pistonheads.com/search#gsc.tab=0

[juggsy]

Zarjaz_1991 said:

Only by bookmarking the direct link.

https://www.pistonheads.com/search#gsc.tab=0

A workaround but also a bit crap, why not have an icon or button to hand? Pretty basic forum feature

[Zarjaz_1991]

juggsy said:

A workaround but also a bit crap, why not have an icon or button to hand? Pretty basic forum feature

I totally agree, it’s come up in another thread, but currently that’s all we have as PH have removed the link in the revamped mobile menu.