Forum Search Function Tutorial

[Sharkû]

<font size=-2>v 1.0, Tutorial by Mister Underhill and Sharkû

1. Finding the Search Function
The forum’s search function is accessible through the small search link at the top right of the forum main page, sub-fora, and all topics.


2. Search options or parameters
a) Search Words
The search function is not case sensitive, gandalf and Gandalf will give the same results.

When you choose the defaut option that the search has to match all keywords you entered, the results will be considerably narrowed down in comparison to a search matching any keyword, which is usually very broad. Unless you are not sure which search words would be the best to pick, I would generally recommend the ‘match all’ option, or using only one keyword at a time. If you search for gandalf sauron and set it to ‘match any’, you are going to end up with a lot of unnecessary results.

b) Forum
This is self-explanatory. You can only search one topic at a time, which should not be too much of a problem, since the fora and their themes are quite different from each other, with exceptions such as the archive forum Haudh-en-Ndengin, where old Books and Novices threads might have been moved.

c) Search In: Entire message – Topic Only
This option is important to narrow your search down. Using Topic Only makes searching a lot easier with very common words such as Gandalf, Ring, etc.
Alternatively, if you remember the name of a thread vaguely, this option can also increase efficency. This is also another reason why it is important to give threads appropriate, descriptive titles.
In all other cases, searching the entire message would be the common choice.

d) By Date
This option is not always necessary, especially since the choices are narrow. It can serve as a method to list a forum’s recent topics, or search for a specific thread which you know is relatively new.
Generally, this option should be left on Any Date.

e) Search By Registered Member Number
This is very useful if you know who started a thread or posted on it, or of course if you are looking for a thread you posted on yourself. It can also serve to get the whole oeuvre of a member in a forum andd goes along well with searching by date.
Naturally, this option is less useful when researching a topic, unless you know that someone posts a lot on certain topics.
You should know (or at least be able to find out) your own member number, and that of others appears next to posts and in the profile.

f) Example:
If you’re searching for a specific thread but can't remember its title, a good strategy to use is to try to recall a fairly unique word that appeared in one of the posts and search on that. For instance, if you remember that Mithadan used the word “argumentation” on the thread, Search “argumentation”, “Match any of the search terms”, “Entire Message”, Member Number “4”.


3. The Results
Forum Searches can only yield up to 200 topics as results, which is why it is important to narrow searches down with the above explained parameters when you are searching for something very frequent. A search for gandalf looking in Entire Messages will give many results, most of them useless, and likely be above the 200 topics limit.
Results, 40 at a time per screen, are automatically sorted by date. Click on More Matches to see results 41 to 80 asf. if necessary.

4. Miscellaneous
a) Your connection speed does not affect the speed of the search. All that's going across the connection is the parameters of the search from your end to our server and then a return list of topics from the server back to you. The biggest single factor in the length of a search will be the parameters that you use, because they will determine how hard the server has to work to conduct the search. All things being equal, Books searches will usually take the longest because it's the biggest forum. Entire Message searches will take much longer than Subject Only searches.
Experience has shown that searching using Match any (as opposed to Match all) of the search terms produces faster results. Of course there are circumstances where you need to Match all to get the result you're looking for, but it can't hurt to try Match any first.
Also, the fewer search terms you use, the faster things run (e.g., searching on only one word will be fastest).
In any case, searches usually should not take longer than a few seconds from the server side.

b) Searching in tags is possible. The UBB search function includes looking within italics, list, bold, etc. tags ([those things]), and even text formatted through html and within html tags.
However, it cannot search within |QUOTE| |/QUOTE| tags.
When searching for an URL, the search does not reach the ‘true’ URL within the [URL=…| tag, but only the ‘description’, per default ‘web page’ between the tags. Neither can search retrieve the URL of a posted picture.
Punctuation marks can sometimes alter the search. So [i]Valar[/i] and Valar, can yield different results. On the upside, you can sometimes use this to your advantage. If you remember that you wrote a sentence that contained haggard followed by a semicolon, searching on haggard; will probably nail the topic you’re looking for.

c) Known problems with the Search Function seem to exist for people using the AOL browser, but might be corrected by a different use of the search parameters.

[ November 19, 2003: Message edited by: Sharkû ]

[Nilpaurion Felagund]

Question: If you are searching for...let's say...Fëanor. Will Feanor and Fëanor give a different result.

(I think I know the answer, but...I hope the answer I have in mind is not it...)

Later days! [img]smilies/cool.gif[/img]
->Elenrod

[Mister Underhill]

The answer is certainly yes, they will yield different results. But you can search on "Feanor Fëanor" and select "Match any" or search on each individually and still get results for both.

[Nilpaurion Felagund]

Hey...never thought of that...thanks!

Later days! [img]smilies/cool.gif[/img]
->Elenrod