Searching the Forums

Hi All

I couldn't find a better place than this to put this topic. The Search box is not the most comprehensive search engine as it has no advanced features, and I always seem to be explaining how to use it effectively. I think I have it tamed, and can now find almost anything. Here are my searching secrets.

You will get a more manageable list of hits if you use more keywords, ie it is an "AND" search engine. eg I searched 'straining' and got 16 pages of hits. I then searched 'straining nature's platform' and it came down to 2 hits, not 2 pages.

If you get a few pages of hits you can still go through them quite quickly by clicking on each topic (hit) and use your browser's Find On This Page tool, via the Edit menu at the top of your browser Window.

Put the keywords into the Find tool and they will be highlighted in each string of comments under the topic. You can use more keywords if you want to, once you see the sort of words that come up in topics, to help you to refine your search. The browser search engines seem to be "OR" type searches, so they will pick up any of the keywords you put in.

Then you can skim the whole string of comments to find the comments that are relevant by looking for the highlighted text (keywords). If you use three keywords you might find that some comments only have one keyword highlighted, so you can not pay as much eye attention to those comments. Don't skip past any topics that are hits because they look irrelevant. Your keywords from the Wholewoman Forum Search will have them in there somewhere, maybe right down the bottom of the page. Keep scrolling until you find them.

Topic subjects often change dramatically and you might find a detailed conversation on a completely different topic under the original topic, waaaay down the bottom.

You can put somebody's username into the WW Search box. This will only bring up the Username if it is in the text of somebody's comment, and you might not get any hits at all. Don't tear out your hair at this point! Just find a post by the Username and click on it. This will take you to their account, where you can find different Tabs at the top. Click on Track Tab and it will bring up all her posts. Sometimes you can think of appropriate keywords and use your browser's Find on This Page tool to search each topic, as before. This is a useful tool if you see a Username come up that is familiar, and you want to check out what the Member has posted previously. Unfortunately these posts are not in chronolocial order, so you may have to check all of them to find her original posts, buried deep inside other topics that she has not started.

There is also an Email Contact Tab. If the Member has set up her profile to accept email contact, and you want to ask her something, or tell her something privately, offline, you can click on this Tab and an email form pops up. All Members can change their profile at any time to accept email contact or not.

I suggest you print this Topic and keep it handy, as this topic will probably get buried, off the Recent Posts front page, in a short time. But you can always search for it again by typing "Searching Forums" into the Search box, and it will come up as a topic hit.

Please post if any of these tips doesn't make sense, and suggest an alternative wording.

Hope this helps you to find topics of personal interest in these Forums.

Cheers

Louise