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The Search Function

#1
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This forum has an excellent SEARCH function. In fact, it has several.

We would ask that you use them because many questions that you might have could already have been answered in detail.
Wouldn't it be great to get an answer right now instead of having to wait for a reply? =)

It is probably even more important with feature suggestions.
Many great ideas have already been submitted. If you have a new idea or an interesting twist to someone else's idea, please add it to a thread that already discusses similar ideas.
That makes it much easier to take the best parts of all these ideas and design an even better game feature.
If the "good bits" are scattered across 5 different threads discussing a similar issue, some inevitably get lost. We do not want your ideas to get lost. Do you?


How to use the regular SEARCH function

You see that white field in the far top right?
That's where you type in stuff. Then you hit ENTER or click the [Search] button right next to it.
Congratulations! Now you know everything!

Well, almost.
You can use wildcards and you can enter multiple search terms.


Wildcards

As is common with computers, the search is quite literal.
wormhole : 33 matches
wormholes : 36 matches
wormhole* : 63 matches

Aha! The * means "any number of any characters" so in effect you get anything that starts with "wormhole" and may or may not have additional letters after it.

The typical issue of "My search didn't find anything!" can often be solved by Doing It Right.
The search function is very fast - but you are a lot smarter! Help our poor forum software in finding what you want and it will happily do so.


Multiple Search Terms

You can search for more than just wormhole*.

If you ask for wormhole* ship*, you only get posts containing both search terms.
That way you don't have to sift through all the posts that only mention one or the other.


Forum-Specific or Topic-Specific Search

If you look at a forum or view a topic, you will find an additional SEARCH field right below the forum or topic name.
Same rules as outlined above except that this search is limited to the current forum / topic.


Advanced Search (click me)

This gives you a lot more options such as limiting the results to a specific author or excluding certain words from your search results.


PS: I won't lock this thread - for now. If anyone wants to add something interesting or if my explanation is too cryptic, speak now or forever hold your peace.
Eventually I'll probably clean things up and split any replies.

Grumblesaur edit: PS: Searching for older still-relevant threads means the forums will remain navigable and uncluttered for much longer, so if you want easy answers, look for the answer before you ask.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
Post

Re: The Search Function

#2
Yerp.. the * is definitely a good thing to know for searching three letter words and your example.. I did come across an annoying thing with the search yesterday though.. I wanted to search for "music" to see what has been discussed about the music in the game so far and how the PCG music is coming along.. but despite music being a 5 letter word, I was told it is too common. What are we meant to do in these cases?

Yup.. you guess it.. (or maybe you didn't):

Add another letter! :)

How do you add another letter to a word that only has 5 letters, effectively making it a 6 letter word?

Add an * to the end.. weird.. but it works.

Try searching for: music

...Too common.

Try searching for: music*

The results you wanted. :)
Post

Re: The Search Function

#3
You forgot the super-advanced search!

In all honesty, this is the search I use for all public-facing forum websites. I always find it superior to the forums' own built-in search and I don't have to worry about the differences in search-string matching patterns/rules that are forum-specific.

I should (at some point) write a browser extension that (with a keypress combination) auto-fills in the "site:domain.name.com" part of the search string in my search bar. So [Ctrl+K] for regular search, perhaps [Ctrl+Shift+K] for "Search within domain of the page opened in the current tab". Oh, except not that exact combo because it seems to open some kind of Firebug JavaScript/debugging console for me.


I may be odd in that behaviour though. Particularly since I 'think' in regex :)
Nobody suspects a Toreador …
Post

Re: The Search Function

#6
ToreadorVampire wrote:You forgot the super-advanced search!

In all honesty, this is the search I use for all public-facing forum websites. I always find it superior to the forums' own built-in search and I don't have to worry about the differences in search-string matching patterns/rules that are forum-specific.
THAT's what i was looking for. i always seem to have the same problem with those search functions: they dont do strings ...

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