QotW: How did you originally find the Ceramic Arts Daily Forum, and how do you search the forums when looking for specific information?

[Pres]

Hi folks, recent events have made me somewhat curious about where everyone comes from, and how you search the forum itself.  Myself, I started following the forum after searching for help on adding "in shop" glazes to the HS ceramics studio as budget constraints were making it harder to have premixed liquid and powdered glazes. Back then I could search all of the strands of the forum by having a general search in the home page. If I wanted to I could be specialized by running a search in one section like " In the Studio" I first found the site from an outside browser.  . I think it was Firefox at the time. 

QotW: How did you originally find the Ceramic Arts Daily Forum, and how do you search the forums when looking for specific information?

best,

Pres

[Min]

I originally stumbled across this forum while doing a Google search. I noticed fairly early on that when I did a Google search this forum came up quite frequently; often with multiple threads on the topic. I use the search function here less frequently now given it only searches threads that have been active for the past two years.

Don't know if this is an issue for others here? 

[LeeU]

I got turned on to this site by ceramicist John Baymore, a former member known to many.  He invited me to particpate in some firings of the large anagama kiln built by him & his students (New Hampshire Institute of Art). I knew about ICAN/CAD but hadn't checked out the Forum site. I had my BFA in ceramics but had taken a 30 year career detour and was trying to get back into it in my retirement years. He suggested the Forum as a reliable resource and supportive community, which of course it has proven to be. And I will add, even tho I am less active, I still feel "part of" and this group process helps sustain me even as I cut back/slow down on activity. 

[Kelly in AK]

My experience matches @Min, the more specialized my questions got in Google, the more often this forum appeared in the search results.

I don’t generally do searches through the forum. I use Google or some other search engine. It seems quicker for me to go through a search engine and navigate that way, even when I’m looking for something specifically in the forum. Expressway vs. scenic route. 

[Hulk]

Found threads here about Wheels, was shopping at the time.
I still appreciate the welcome detailed and helpful info.
From there, started following new content, and also got hits on external and internal ceramic/pottery searches.
Helps to know that the internal search feature excludes threads that have been idle for two or more years. If I want a full search, I'll use an external search engine.

[Pres]

So @Hulk, if doing a google search how would you target the forum directly in the search?

best,

Pres

[Hulk]

Hi Pres,

To hit this Forum at the top of the return, "anding" the address seems to do it, e.g.

community.ceramicartsdaily and "red clay"

where I'm limiting for only everything with the exact words "red clay" on the site, well that's what I believe happens, lots of hits!
Note that some browsers support the word and, some require the & symbol.
...there were other returns, but the Forum's was first.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Hulk
matching at top

[Kelly in AK]

To add, or perhaps say the same thing in a different way, my move is to put the words:

ceramic arts daily forum

in the with search term itself. For example, if I want to see what people said about spodumene I search “spodumene ceramic arts daily forum,” without actually using any quotation marks or “and,” because as Hulk said, those operators can prompt the search engine to do very specific things (at least they used to, everything has developed so fast I’m not sure what the rules are anymore!). Using just words has been working fine for me.

Google, Duckduckgo, and Yahoo all present results slightly differently, but the forum posts are at the top of each search regardless. 

[PeterH]

I also found this forum  because general searches found some very interesting postings on it.

When I want to use a general browser (mine is google) I default to using site:community.ceramicartsdaily.org

PS Just for interest I tried three google searches
"red clay" and community.ceramicartsdaily
"red clay" community.ceramicartsdaily
"red clay" site:community.ceramicartsdaily.org

Which returned 12,700, 15,000 & 594 results respectively. (The order, and possibly the number,  of results may/will-be influenced by my previous search history.)

Repeating the searches a few minutes later I got 13,400, 15,400 &  757 results.

Just reporting the number of results, not judging their quality.

[Callie Beller Diesel]

I originally  found it first through Pinterest. I had a brand new IPhone 4 in 2008 and a baby to nurse, so there was a lot of time spent holding still but kinda bored. I was missing making pots, so I was looking at them instead. There were articles and links to questions on the forum that got me thinking about how to answer them. At the risk of sounding like a weirdo, as a learning exercise I have always talked to myself in my own head as if I were teaching a class to myself. It’s a good mnemonic device that helps cement your own understanding.

I hadn’t really intended to ever create an account or chime in, and lots of other folks seemed to have most of the questions handled pretty good. After a while, I had a sense of who the community members were and what they were most knowledgeable about. None of the regulars at the time was doing any kind of commission work though, and someone asked a question about it. It just so happened that I was working for a company that worked exclusively with bespoke glass customers, so I had a good model of how to make commissions financially viable. So I wrote a novel for my first post, lol!