Search - How to use it...Please Read

[daryn]

Search Tutorial - Beginners guide

Intro

You may be a first time user of this forum or an old hat, either way learning how to use search can be a bit of a skill on its own, with over 4000 members and now over 90,455 posts (at time of writing) there is a huge amount of information, these posts are spread over 5100 plus threads or discussions, so finding something can sometimes be a right ole pain in the behind.

So to help everyone, old and new, out we have created this help thread on "how to use search", don't worry I have even learnt thing's writing this up.

A couple of points to think about whether it be searching or posting:

1. Search is friend :D
2. Don't be afraid to play with the advanced options as you will see below.
3. If you are creating a new thread/disussion think about your title as it can greatly help others to search it out later and of course makes search work better, sit back and have a look at the titles that get created already and you will see what we mean.
4. A lot of stuff has already been said in the past which can be hard to find so dont worry if we either point you to that other thread or we may merge the two threads together. You will get better at this as you gain more experience here.
5. Search can save you invaluable time.

This is intended as a simple beginners guide to using search to get you use to it, and advanced guide will be developed and added below over time.

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1. This is what the advanced search screen looks like, it is your friend, I wanted to use as vague off topic title in this example so as you can see I am searching for the term "users online", practise this and use your own search term.

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2. So normally what you will do is type this in and go straight to the bottom and click SEARCH, but just have a glance at all of the options in between for a moment.

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3. After clicking SEARCH have a look at what I got, 31 matches spread over 2 pages. Just imagine if you had typed egr or suspension etc. your results would have probably been over 50 pages easy.

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4. Now you will have noticed that the "Display results as" option is by default set to POSTS, try changing it to TOPICS and now click SEARCH.

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5. You can now view the same 31 posts but they are showed as Topics now, 5 of them actually. Have a look and you can see by title if something may be close to what you are searching for. But the point is the same information has now been condensed to 1 page of 5 topics, not as scary as previously searched.

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6. Now to narrow down again in this example I have selected to search in a particular forum only and below that I have said to only search in"topic titles" only. I have still selected "Display results as Topics".

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7. After clicking search my results are returned and in this search I got one, the one I was actually after, awesome.

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This is not intended as the only method to use search but more to get you to using the different options available, so as you can see from the above examples, by taking a moment and thinking about some of the advanced options that you can select you can narrow down your search results quite extensively.

It may not always work and there are plenty of other alternative options to select, but take a moment to try choosing them because once you have mastered it you will get the answers you are looking for.

[daryn]

Using Google Advanced Search

So here is a good alternative to try as well.

Go to http://www.google.com.au

You will see on the right hand side of the input box "Advanced Search", click it.

Type in what you want to search.

Now have a look at the next options and read them, you may want to add something in these.

But the big one is last "Search within a site or domain:" type in http://www.newtriton.net and then click SEARCH.

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[Mooons]

BUMP. C'mon people, SEARCH before posting, there's a good chance it's been mentioned before.

Most of us do mate

[Cowboy Dave]

Thanks Tex. There has been a rash of new threads on old topics lately so this is a timely reminder - especially for some of our newer members.

[daryn]

A belated thanks Tex

[hvac guy]

removed and moved

[daryn]

hey dave how about a thread called social chat where people can post about anything in real time
to get a reply about what ever. like twitter sort of but the thread gets all posts deleted at the end of every week
but if there is some usefull stuff in there it gets moved to related topics.

log onto chat is only good for when your online when a lot of us like to log on every couple of hours to check
whats goin on.

thoughts ?

Is this a setup ?

http://www.newtriton.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=736&hilit=suggestions

Who put you up to this, whats there name ?

USE SEARCH

[the d]

Well i just read the detailed instructions about how to use the Advanced section of the search and now i can see how i can easily cut down pages and pages of nonsense into what im looking for.

Thanks for the help

[Chw33]

Cheers mate read it got it

[mad992]

Cheers mate read it got it

well done not like some of our other newer members they just want to reinvent 4yr old topics that have been well and truely debated

[hewy hacket]

Help, can someone tell me why arb is not showing up in a search when I know it is in the forums - I have tried typing +arb, +ARB, arb, ARB, Arb and no results are found

[Cowboy Dave]

Searches of 3 letters or less won't work.

You can try using a google site search instead which does not suffer from the same limitations. Or search on the product you're after (eg 'air locker' or 'sahara') instead of the brand.

They also have a sponsors section that you can browse to directly without a search from the index page.

[hewy hacket]

No worries thanks.

[4wd26]

or for 3 letter searches the wildcard is your friend

ARB*
http://www.newtriton.net/phpbb/search.php?keywords=arb*&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search


the astrix is a wildcard being able to pick up some examples of the 3 letter occurrences
the search function is not case sensitive so the same result is achieved with
ARB*
arb*


tjm*
http://www.newtriton.net/phpbb/search.php?keywords=tjm*&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

but most of all have fun

[canciano]

I need to know the valve clearance on triton 4d56 engine

[Cowboy Dave]

I need to know the valve clearance on triton 4d56 engine

Then you should post in this thread for your answer: http://www.newtriton.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=8413&hilit=valve+clearance#p162862

Since you've posted in a searching thread I'll explain how I got there - click the search button up the top, enter the words valve clearance, click the little circle to choose search topic titles only and then hit search. Scan down the results and look for the closest hit to what you're after.

[har05l]

Time to bump this easy to use task

[coughy]

time for a bump ladies and gentleman
look read learn before you post pls

[Vroomy]

Am finding it won't do a search without the Authors name box checked. Why is this all I want to do is search and I don't know any authors

[NowForThe5th]

Just checked it and working fine for me using keywords only.