Just wanted to let everyone know that I've been working on a search program for the message forums. Due to the forum's unique way of storing messages I've had to completely custom write the application - and learn Perl in the process.

I'm just putting the finishing touches on it now. It will match any number of search terms, case insensitive, automatic wildcards, and will display results in best-match order.

It won't search all forums at once, but perhaps I'll consider that for version 2. :-)

Daniel,
Thanks for your efforts! Search capability will be a nice addition to Pronto Forum features.
Clay W.

Okay, I lied... I did manage to get all forum searching capability working. The form's at the bottom of the main thread listing... let me know if you have any problems.

Wow, I can't believe this has gone so far down the list already.

I have a question for anyone interested (if you're reading this, you probably are): on the main thread list, do you prefer it the way it is -- sorted by the order that a thread was created -- or would you prefer it sorted by the date a message was last added to a thread, like with The Ultimate BBS (used by www.hometheaterforum.com)?

After working on the search program I turned my efforts to tweaking the list.cgi program (which I had already heavily modified) and ended up scrapping it and started over from scratch. I've been testing the new one for a few days now and would like to get some user input on sorting.

I would prefer sorting by the date a message was last added -- all this scrolling is making me dizzy :-)

Seriously, this is a great site. In fact, I just stopped programming my new Pronto a few minutes ago... I do have to get some sleep tonight!

Why is the date in international format (dd/mm/yy)? Makes it confusing to those of us accustomed to mm/dd/yy.....

I'm with Kevin on this one. Putting most recent message at the top makes the most sense. IMHO

Paul's message confuses me. My display shows mm/dd/yy just the way we like it...

Vince: I got the new forum running today (it was when you posted as well). Everything's sorted by the date a message was added to a thread. So if message number 10 had a message posted today, it would be at the top while message number 125, which hasn't had a message since December, would be down lower. This seems to be the most popular way to sort things.

The date was only switched today from DD/MM/YY to MM/DD/YY - this was one of the changes in my new program.