New & Old Mudcat Features to Explore

Subject: Mudcat Features to Explore
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Apr 22 - 06:58 PM

There are lots of interesting Mudcat features on our Quick Links dropdown menu, which you'll find at the top of most Mudcat pages. My favorite is the Song Origins & Info database, a list of all the groups of song crosslinks we've developed over the years. In the midst of this week's overhaul of Mudcat, Max has added a similar Musicians database, which indexes all the Musicians / Performers / Composers / Collectors crosslinks we've assembled over the years. Take a look at these features and others in Quicklinks.
-Joe-

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Subject: RE: Mudcat Features to Explore
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Apr 22 - 07:09 PM

Another feature in Quick Links is our curiously-named Old Advanced Forum Search, which also contains our newest search engines and some great oldies like the

• Filter (search by thread title, our fastest and most reliable search engine)
• Subject Search (search by message title - great for finding song titles)
• UserName (search by the name of the person who posted

Here's what that "Old Adv. Forum Search" looks like:

Discussion Forum Enhanced Search

Search Forum By Subject or UserName
Subject
UserName

Check this box if you would like to sort your results by name rather than date.

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Full Forum Filter

Song Title Or Artist Name
  Use Full Artist Name or Full Song Title to see a forum of threads about that artist. Be careful not to be too general because this filters 5 years of threads.

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Lyrics & Knowledge Search [Advanced] DT  Forum Child Sort (Forum) by:relevance date DT Lyrics: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ # All

SUBJECT

Search for words or phrases that would appear in the Subject line of a message. This is not the thread name as seen and searchable from the main forum page, but the titles of the individual messages within a thread. This is also a "contains" search. Again be careful of searches that are too general.

USERNAME

Search for a particular person that has posted. This is also a "contains" search, so searching for "Max" will also yield "Max D. Spiegel" and "Max Spiegel", "Alan Lomax", etc., but searching for "Max D. Spiegel" will not produce any "Max" enties.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Features to Explore
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Apr 22 - 07:20 PM

Another Mudcat feature to explore is the Mudcat FAQ - Newcomer's Guide. There's a link to it at the top of the list of threads on the Forum Menu page. There's a secret to the FAQ - the actual FAQ is only about the first ten messages of the FAQ thread, up to the point there there's a yellow line and the words "the end." The rest of the thread is questions and answers about the FAQ. I try to keep the FAQ up-to-date.

Subject: RE: New & Old Mudcat Features to Explore
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Apr 22 - 08:38 PM

Max fixed and updated all or our search engines. He also added an intriguing feature to Search. He kinda likes to hide "Easter Eggs" like this here and there to surprise people. See if you can find it....

Advanced Lyrics & Knowledge Search

DT   Forum
Enter exact phrase(s) or term(s):

	(required)
and or not
and or not
and or not

Sort (Forum) by: relevance date

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	PowerSearch
for:
at:	Mudcat Search Google Google Groups (NewsGroups) OLGA (chords) JC's ABC Tune Finder The Fiddler's Companion Levy Sheet Music Collection The Ballad Index Bodleian Library FolkTrax 10,000 Folk Songs Cowpie (Country) Gracenote CDDB Onelook Dictionary Search AMAZON $ Barnes and Noble $ AltaVista (Web) AltaVista Audio Lycos Audio

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Proximity Search:
DT   Forum

separated by no more than (0 to 1000) words* from

Sort (Forum) by: relevance date

* Higher numbers are sometimes needed to account for some punctuation and html.

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Try your own Verity Search:
DT   Forum  Help

Simple   Explicit  

Sort (Forum) by: relevance date

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Lyrics & Knowledge Search DT  Forum Child Sort (Forum) by:relevance date DT Lyrics: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ # All

Forum: DT:

Simple Explicit

Subject: RE: New & Old Mudcat Features to Explore
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Apr 22 - 12:04 AM

That's a great layout! Thanks!

Subject: RE: New & Old Mudcat Features to Explore (SEARCH)
From: GUEST,bbc
Date: 14 Apr 22 - 12:30 AM

It all sounds super! Thanks, Joe & Max! ??

Subject: RE: New & Old Mudcat Features to Explore
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Apr 22 - 10:41 AM

Loaded nice and quickly. I'm in favor of keeping the current site format and platform, with the new enhancements of course! Partly because I'm sentimental about ColdFusion, but also because I don't think we need to be drawing people in with fancy new functionality that requires more time and money. It's not that hard to get around in.
A lot of the newer tech, is overly dynamic in my opinion, whereas Mudcat has the more solid feel of being structured by people rather than an attempt to please by an AI algorithm.
Just my uninvited thought.

Subject: RE: New & Old Mudcat Features to Explore
From: Max
Date: 14 Apr 22 - 11:14 PM

At this st(age), we're optimizing for discovery and expression.

Bad ass searching options and tools of articulation.

Subject: RE: New & Old Mudcat Features to Explore
From: GUEST,bbc
Date: 15 Apr 22 - 09:51 PM

Thanks, Max!

Subject: RE: New & Old Mudcat Features to Explore
From: pattyClink
Date: 16 Apr 22 - 11:41 AM

Excellent info! I just used the Musicians lookup to find the thread on the Pravers' songs. Hope this thread stays high long enough for us to learn all the tricks.

Subject: RE: New & Old Mudcat Features to Explore
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Apr 22 - 12:44 PM

thank you thank you thank you Max

Subject: RE: New & Old Mudcat Features to Explore
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 19 Apr 22 - 08:21 AM

I go away to a festival for a few days & come back to this, thanks Max