HOW TO SEARCH THIS FORUM - Read Before Posting! |
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sean
Moderator Group Sponsor Member Joined: 20 July 2005 Location: North Idaho Status: Offline Points: 7388 |
Topic: HOW TO SEARCH THIS FORUM - Read Before Posting! Posted: 27 July 2007 at 9:54am |
This forum has grown tremendously since it's early days. We're getting new members every day, and we have over 128,000 postings! But with that we're getting lots of repeat questions on issues which have been discussed and/or answered at length in the past.
*** PLEASE everyone, perform a search first, before diving in w/questions! Now that's easier to say than do, because the search function is not optimized. The default search settings:
Always use "ADVANCED SEARCH" THE DEFAULTS When you choose "Advanced Search", you get this window: If you just type in a key word or two & hit return, you won't get all the right answers. Check and set these options: The "Search by Keyword" field has 3 options. It makes a big difference if you are searching for more than one word:
The "Match Any Word" option, will find any topic which contains any of the key words! This is will result in lots of irrelevant results.
The "Match Phrase" option, will find only topics which contains all of the key words, in the exact order you typed them in! *** NEW 5-5-08 *** Have discovered ANOTHER bug in the search function, however there IS a workaround. To accurately find a SINGLE and UNIQUE WORD you MUST prepend and/or append a "space" character, AND put the WHOLE string in double-quotes, AND use the "Match phrase" option. eg: a search for the word special will also find many irrelevant posts, eg:
search for "special ", or " special", or " special " -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The "Find Posts" field is critical if you want to find all possible results, regardless of when it was posted:
If you don't know when the post was made, then choose the "Any Date" option. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- eg., if you are on the home page when you hit search, you'll get this, and it will search every forum: but if you happen to be reading something in the "Tech Q&A" forum when you hit search, it wants to search only w/in Tech Q&A: so if your intent was to search elsewhere, or anywhere, you have to manually select the correct forum(s). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The "Search In" field has only 2 options, and they are mutually exclusive.
The "Topic Subject" option searches only w/in the topic title! It does not search the actual message. With only these 2 options, you may not find all relevant postings. To be sure, you should perform 2 searches, using each option. This field really needs a 3rd. option "Message and Topic", but for now we don't have that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And finally, there's one more consideration: SPELLING! We're not all literary geniuses here , so try common alternate spellings, misspellings & typos too! Happy hunting!Edited by sean - 08 June 2010 at 1:49pm |
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rocnroll
Member Sponsor Member Joined: 20 July 2005 Location: Tuscumbia, AL Status: Offline Points: 13563 |
Posted: 27 July 2007 at 10:04am |
Great job Sean....that ought to be very helpful. !
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'47 CJ2A PU
'48 CJ2A Lefty "Common sense is not that common" |
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hillbilly21
Member Sponsor Member Joined: 18 June 2006 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 4964 |
Posted: 27 July 2007 at 12:14pm |
X2 Sure helped me out today !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Lomar15
Member Sponsor Member Joined: 01 Jan. 2006 Location: Fanny Bay, B.C. Canada Status: Offline Points: 1226 |
Posted: 08 Aug. 2007 at 5:06am |
Good point Sean, and good job explaining it!
thanks
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46 CJ2A #48777
42 MB Slat Grill 119898 Frame 51 M38 Body 42 MB #155950 Spen Trailer http://picasaweb.google.com/lomar15CJ2A |
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dclear
Member Joined: 12 July 2006 Location: Milwaukee, wi Status: Offline Points: 927 |
Posted: 19 Aug. 2007 at 8:40pm |
Yeah, Sean--thanks. I had sort of "discovered" most of what you laid out, but often forgot, or just didn't put it all together. You de big picture man!
Maybe we need a quarterly "test" for continued membership.
del
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del clear
Together we can figure it out, after all, it's only a machine, if a man can build it, a man can fix it. {Author: bkruetz} |
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rocnroll
Member Sponsor Member Joined: 20 July 2005 Location: Tuscumbia, AL Status: Offline Points: 13563 |
Posted: 20 Aug. 2007 at 12:50am |
Uh..........Eye r Not 2 guD with testss....
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'47 CJ2A PU
'48 CJ2A Lefty "Common sense is not that common" |
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sean
Moderator Group Sponsor Member Joined: 20 July 2005 Location: North Idaho Status: Offline Points: 7388 |
Posted: 05 May 2008 at 4:54pm |
BUMP:
new info added today, 5-5-08, regarding SINGLE WORD searches |
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oldstuf93
Member Joined: 07 Dec. 2012 Location: Rochester, Minn Status: Offline Points: 91 |
Posted: 06 Mar. 2013 at 2:46pm |
i just stumbled across this. Seems it is time to bring it to the front.
Ray |
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48 cj2a, 47 Cat d45t, 26 Dodge coupe 340-6pack, 63 Dodge M37, 52 GMC XM211, 70 Dodge Challenger 496-6pack
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