Member Search suggestion

Roger_Ramjet

I was just wanting to search for members in my local area, I know there are a few, but the member search has no option for this. Now I know that many members just put funnies in there, or do not enter any location at all, but it would still be nice to be able to search amongst those that do use the field properly, get some local networking going on.

stolzyboy

according to vbulletin forums, it is available in vB 3.0... you may have to PM JPnyc about getting this added, i'm not sure if it's an addon or something that gets enabled in the admin panel or what

stolzyboy

JPnyc

Many people don't even put their locations or choose to let them show, so what would be the point?

Roger_Ramjet

Well, as I said, some people do and if they were searcheable then maybe more people would include a real location.

I was trying to search them because I know that one of the older members is also located in Leeds, I just can't remember who it is. Probably several other members are located in my part of the UK. Since I'm back in the job market I want to do some networking and I hope that my postings here would count with other senior members. Who knows what jobs they could put me on to, especially as 50%+ of jobs are filled through contacts not job ads or agencies.

Apart from that, it would just be nice for people to be able to hook up with other local members sometimes.

Htmlwiz

I agree that would be a good idea

pcthug

Why doesn't someone make an addon that if a users location is not filled out, it determines the persons approximate location via there last logged IP address?

Weedpacket

JupiterMedia's privacy policy restricts them from publishing/supplying personal information, but explicitly notes that any such information voluntarily posted by the user (list of user locations appearing in this thread elided) is that user's responsibility. In other words, the user's location is only a secret if they don't choose to make it public (in their profile, for example).

(Incidentally, Roger, I did find one other user who claims to be in Leeds).🙂

stolzyboy

well, in all actuality... the UK is about the size of what? Indiana or something? You could probably drive the whole country in a day, unlike the US or any other large country.

So Roger, just drive door to door! 🙂

Roger_Ramjet

If you think you can drive from one end of the UK to the other in a day you don't know what driving conditions are like here. In fact, driving anywhere in the UK is a nightmare these days. How about 15 miles from my house to the centre of Leeds takes over an hour during the rush hours - and they are hours. Hell, the average speed in a car in London is 10 miles and hour, gets like that around every town and city during the peak times, eg 300 yards through Headingly taked 1/2 hour between 3.30 and 6 pm.

I'm sure that it is absolutely the same in New York, Chicargo, LA and other major US cities at lot of the time, it certainly is across most of Europe.

Apart from the fact that I can not drive door to door if I don't know who is in the UK in the first place, which was the whoe reason I started this thread.

JPnyc

I appreciate the reasons but we can't display any info the user doesn't want displayed.

Roger_Ramjet

I would not ask anyone to breach confidence and display info the user had not oked for display - only for a method to search such public information when it is displayed.

All the other issues raised by other posters in this thread are irrelevent to my request.

stolzyboy

my old man was in england last year, him and a few buddies were there visiting a friend that lives in london... they took a day in a half and drove from each end of england... stopping for pints and acting like typical tourists... if you aren't in big cities, you can make time fast 🙂

btw... my comment was for mere humor factor, stating that you don't really live FAR from anyone in comparison to some of us in the US...

for example, it'd be much quicker for you to drive ANYWHERE in the UK than for me to drive and meet up with Elizabeth and we are obv. in the US 🙂

and the door to door... just knock, if they answer, ask them if they've heard of PHPBuilder, if not, go to the next one...

i'm obviously kidding here, lighten up, your blood pressure is gonna elevate 🙂

it's all in good fun bro 😛

JPnyc

Well the problem then becomes, what constitutes your "area"? Do we search on Leeds or Northern UK or Yorkshire? As I'm sure you know, with queries this becomes important. And you'll only get the returns that specify your criteria, we don't have the faciltiy to search within a certain radius of your location.

Roger_Ramjet

Well, I was not thinking of a full scale area search, just a simple text search that I could run. As I said, I remember seeing someone else who had their location listed as LEEDS and all I wanted to do was search for that user. Of course, adding full location data when one registers would be a nice option for those who chose it. We could then get into some local networking if we wanted.

Yes, I know that this is turning the place into a social networking forum, but why not. We all share a lot in common just because we are here. Have to be voluntary but I'm sure plenty of people would participate once it got going.

Anyway, that is something to think about I'm sure.

JPnyc

I get it. Unfortunately there's no way to add it simply, it would require hacking up the code which we just don't have the time to do, particularly at upgrade time (which this is, and this site is among the next group to be done).

JPnyc

I did the next best thing that I could though, I enabled location on the members list.