Searching the Archives (Link to new turorial inside)

pulsar wrote:
You should follow the link to the new tutorial.
The New Search Engine, a Tutorial

The Open Roads search engine allows you to search all forums or a specific forum over a specified time frame. You can also filter the results by username. The search engine searches thread topics, the body of posts or both. It does not search signatures and profiles. The following tutorial attempts to show you how to use the search engine.

There are three steps in performing a search:
1) Engaging the search engine by clicking on the Search link (with the magnifying glass) in the upper-right corner of the screen;
2) entering the search criteria;
3) clicking on the Search Now button. The three steps are indicated by the red text in the body of the tutorial. The rest of the material is explanatory.

To initiate a search, click on the Search link in the upper-right corner of the page.

Enter the search criteria.

The next screen contains input fields to accept your search criteria.

Keywords:
With one exception, you must enter something in this field. (See the comments in the Message Author section of this tutorial.)

• Use short phrases that contain significant words. For example, search for Saturn toad instead of does anyone use a Saturn toad.
  
• Upper- and lower-case letters are treated the same; i.e., WORD and word are equivalent.
  
• Substring searches are not preformed. A search for toad will not find occurrences of toads.
  
• An asterisk * can be used as a suffix wildcard. A search for toad* will find toad, toads or any other word whose first four letters are toad. Note: This is an improvement over the previous search engine which would not have found toad in a search for toad*.

Keyword Match:
The search engine does not allow boolean operators such as AND, OR, NOT, +, and -. Instead, the three Word Matching options provide tools to help you manage the search.

Find posts with the exact phrase

• Use short phrases (even one word) that contain significant words.
  
• If an exact phrase search fails, try an all of these words search.
  

Find posts with all of the words in any order

• This option is equivalent to a boolean AND or + search.
  

Search In:
These options let you limit the search to subjects (topics) as entered by the originators of the threads, or to the body of the posts made in the thread.

Entire Message

• This is the default mode and instructs the software to both the subject lines for the threads and the text of the posts.
  
• Note: Entire Message does not include the signatures that may appear at the bottom of the posts.
  

Body Only

• Instructs the software to look for matches in body of posts.
  
• Use this option when searching for a particular post that you know contains a specific word or phrase. Allowing matches in the subject portion of threads can result in many extra 'hits.' (See comment in the Search Results portion of this tutorial.)
  

Subject Only

• Instructs the software to search only in the subjects (topics) entered by the originators of the threads.
  

Message Author:
The Message Author field is optional. This field allows you to limit the hits to posts made by a particular author.

• As with the Search Words field, this field is not case-sensitive.
  
• Unlike the Search Words field, the asterisk * cannot be used as a suffix wildcard.
  

Suppose you wanted to find all of the posts over the last month by a member with a username of Fast Eddie. Leave the Search Words field empty. Enter Fast Eddie in the Message Author field. Select Last 30 Days from the Date Posted drop-down menu.

Date Posted:
The Date Posted: drop-down menu allows you to specify a search period for up to one year. The search range always starts from the present. There are several time intervals that you can indicate; e.g., Today, Last 7 Days, Last 3 Months, or Archive - over 1 year ago. Note: The Archive - over 1 year ago option will search the archives for posts that are more than a year old. To find all of the posts in the archives for a given criteria, one most do two searches; one with the Date Posted field set to Last 12 months and one with this field set to Archive - over 1 year ago. Be aware that some of the forums are newer than others and threads posted prior to 9/4/2004 in the General RVing Issues forum were accidentally deleted.

Forum(s):
By default, the search engine looks at all of the forums. If you want to limit the search to one or more particular forums, you can select them form the Forum(s): scroll list in the Advanced Options section of the window. Holding the control (Ctrl) key down (PC users) while selecting allows you to make multiple selections. Mac user should hold down the Command key instead of the control key.

To perform the search, click on the Search Now button.

Search Results
If the search engine is unable to find a match for your search criteria, it reports Your search returned no results.

If the search engine finds match(es), it returns a page (or pages) of links to the posts that meet your search criteria. At the top of a page of links is a drop-down menu that allows you to sort the matches by Date Posted (the default), Author, Forum, or Subject..

Each line of a reported match contains four parts:

1. Subject – the thread's topic as provided by the thread’s originator. Clicking on this link will open the thread and position the actual post in the viewing window, if the Date Posted: field is set for Last 12 month or less. See the comment section below for a discussion of results form Over 1 year ago searches.
   
2. Author – The name of the user making the matching post. Clicking on the author’s name will produce a list of links to all of the author’s post in the forum’s database.
   
3. Date Posted – This field contains the date and time the post was made. If you are looking for a particular post, you should make note of this information. The author may have made several posts in a given thread. There will be a separate link for each of a author's post in a thread that matches the search criteria.
   
4. Forum – This field contains a link to the first page of the indicated forum.

Some comments about search results

• When your search produces matches in the subject portion of a thread, which can happen when the Search In: option is set for Entire Message (the default) or Subject Only, the page of results will contain a link for each post in a thread that matches your other search criteria (such as Date Posted or Author:.) This can produce many superfluous results to wade through if your search gets a match in the subject of one of the longer threads.
  
  
• The Search Results' list of links to matching posts can contain links to posts that do not contain your search word. One way this happens is described in the previous comment. In addition, the search engine also looks at the 4UMS codes (used for formatting) that are invisible to the reader of a thread. For example, any search for blue will get a match on any post that contains blue text in its body, so long as other criteria are satisfied, even though the word blue nowhere appears in the post.
  
  
• When the Date Posted field is set to Over 1 year ago, matching posts will be all be at least 1 year old and they will be locked. You cannot respond to them. Moreover, the page of links to posts that match the search criteria look the same as the results for results from less than 1 year. If the result link you click on represents a post on the first page of the thread, it will be displayed the same as search results that are less than a year old. However, if the link represents a post on a page other than the first one in the thread, the link will be to the first post in the thread and not to the actual post that contains the match. Before clicking on the link, make note of the date and time of the actual matching post. With that information, you will be able to move through the thread to the actual matching post.
  
  
• Indexing of posts is now done in real-time. This means that searches will include posts that were made as recently as 20 to 40 seconds prior to the initiation of the search.
  

Finding posts you have made.
There is a link to all of your posts in your profile. The profile also contains a link to your last post. To review a list of recent posts, set up a search as follows.

• Leave the Search Words: field empty.
  
• Enter your username in the Author: field.
  
• Set the Date Posted field for the time interval in which you are interested.
  
• Set the other search parameters as desired. You could limit the search to a particular forum. You could limit the search to topics you have posted.
  

Finding posts directed to you.
I have long been an advocate of including a member's username when addressing a post to him or her. If everyone adopted that convention then it would be easy to check for posts directed to you. All you would need to do is enter your login name in the Search Words field. Leave the Author: field empty. And click the Search Now button. This is an advantage of addressing members with their username. There is only one pulsar on the forum; there are many Toms.

Tom