Author Topic: Effective Searching  (Read 4340 times)

Peter van Es

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Effective Searching
« on: January 22, 2009, 09:18:23 »
I've recently discovered something on the Search... function of the board that surprised me and I need to share with you. Frequently I come across posts which state: "I searched for xxxx... but found nothing". It has been my experience that the Search function, and especially the Advanced Search function are much, much better that the functions on our old forum, where we actually had to resort to Google searches because of frequent timeouts.

What I learned is that where you are in the board determines the scope of the search function.

If you are reading a topic, and you use the Search... box at the top right, that Search only extends to the current topic. (see picture SeachThread.jpg below)

If you are reading a board (e.g. "About this site"), and have a list of topics in front of you, and then you use the Search... function, that Search only finds relevant topics in that board.

If you want to find results across all boards and all topics, you'll need to go to the top level, where you get a list of all the available boards, and then use Search. See picture SearchExplanation.jpg. A quick way to go to the top level is to click on the Forum tab on the top bar.

Finally, a little tip... you may have wondered what that little mark (two triangles and horizontal lines) at the top right hand side of the screen (to the right of the Logout tab) is. Just click on it. It hides the banner from the site, giving you an additional few lines of messages. Regrettable that also hides how many personal messages you have... If you click it again, the information returns. See the screen shots...

Hopefully this helps...

Peter
1970 280SL. System Admin of the site. Please do not mail or PM me questions on Pagoda's... I'm not likely to know the answer.  Please post on the forum instead!