Originally Posted by
TonyC
The problem is, every member might want a different "filter" to look at different topics, and the number of buttons required to make everyone happy would also make everyone unhappy about the number of buttons.
But if a sufficient number of people wanted a convenient search filter, it might be something worth considering. Until then, I suggest the Original Poster bookmark one of the links above, or create a custom search to include or exclude the forums of his choice, and use that to quickly filter the forum search to his own taste.
Great post Tony, thanks! As you point out, the problem is trying to anticipate the combination forums and exclude/include options to keep everyone happy. Forum subscriptions can work for specific forums, but your exclude solution is also very helpful for a "new posts" filter.
What I would suggest, with your permission, is to make this post into a FAQ, then users can roll their own filters and save them as a browser bookmark. It is worth mentioning that users will want to save the query and not the resulting search ID to their bookmark links.