Forgot to add that the ?# that is supposed to follow .html on messages that reside on forums2.gardenweb.com is also missing, i.e., the results returned: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/exseed/msg0118570514094.html and it should have been http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/exseed/msg0118570514094.html?1

Thank you very much Josh, we appreciate your work and look forward to the results of our searches. We love our forum and being able to search through the posts makes it whole again. Trudi

I would say repost it Barbararose, but the reality is that absent a "sticky" function, that thread will soon be just another lost thread. One not particularly satisfying "workaround" is to refind threads/posts worthy of note and create a new thread containing a link to the post, and put a "special" word in the new post's title so that word can be used as a search key in the future. (I know of no way to edit the title of a thread without simply reposting it.) Such word could be something like "stickie", or "repost", or "Look here", but it should be a word/term that is generally agreed upon. Unfortunately, without the ability to note "special" threads, even such a word or term will at some point be "lost in the archives". Of course, should the thread that first notes the "special word or phrase" be resurrected periodically for the next nine years, like the now-infamous "death of a forum" thread, it should become 'corporate culture' at the vermicomposting site. Maybe by then, Garden Web will have upgraded the forum software to include a "stickie" function. By the way, there's more to implementing a "stickie" function than just "poof, you now have a stickie function". Most importantly, it costs money because "stickies" 1) increase storage requirements (in truth trivially, but let's do keep in mind that this site is about money, not "goodness"), and 2) "someone" - usually someone called a "moderator" - has to be the arbiter of what gets "stuck". Either Garden Web modifies the whole forum to allow such administrative control to specific people for each sub-forum, or they have to take that responsibility on themselves. The first means more potential for getting hacked, and the second means modifying the forum administration software. Both cost money. As "difficult" as the above might sound, the truth is that simply using a "modern" forum software package would completely mitigate all the 'trouble' associated with the change, and improve the editor and improve the search engine. BUT, it most certainly would cost money. Paul

When that happens, goto google.com and type in: site:gardenweb.com brandywine It gives much better results anyway than this built in search engine. I searched brandywine and got over 2,000 hits.