User Guide
Forum and topic search
User Guide
- Predefined searches
- Forum and topic search
- Advanced search
- The Memberlist
One of the most common searches is going to be searching the forum messages for keywords. For example, in a car related forum, you might be interested in topics related to a Ford Focus, so entering those keywords would then list all posts that contain those two words.
Keywords
In addition to supplying keywords, special identifiers can be used to add or detract from the importance of certain words.
Identifiers:
"+" When placed before a keyword, that keyword must be found in the result text.
"-" When placed before a keyword, that keyword must not be present in the result text.
Examples:
"+DOG -CAT" = Returns results which contain the word "dog", but not "cat".
"|" This token can be used to separate a list of keywords, of which at least one of the keywords should be found in the text. Words may be placed inside of parentheses and combined with a "+" or "-" to indicated that at least one of the words must or must not appear in each result.
Examples:
"DOG|CAT" = Returns results which contain either the word "dog" or the word "cat".
"-(DOG|CAT)" = Returns results which contain neither the word "dog" nor the word "cat".
"*" An asterisk in a keyword allows for partial keyword matches.
Examples:
"CAT*" = Returns results which begin with the word "cat", such as "cats" and "catastrophe".
"*DOG" = Returns results which end with the word "dog", such as "underdog".
Further refinement
Once the search has been performed, you might find you have too many results and need to refine the search even more. On the result page, it is possible to further refine your search by providing more search terms.
Example: In this search for the term "cat", 2125 matches were found. Using the search bar above the first post, a search was made for "dog". The result is 222 matches for posts that contain both cat and dog in them.
