How does Search work ?

[John Stevenson]

It wants a keyword and you have the choice of entering a user name or * as a wild card for user.

What happens if you want to search posts by a user because it won't accept a * as a keyword and if you leave it blank it says not found.
the problem isn't just this forum but any that uses the simple machines forum software.
Probably me not using it right but it isn't very intuitive.

John S.

[andyf]

I don't know if there's some special trick, John, but when searching for posts by a particular user I just enter a (the indefinite article) in the text box, in the hope that he will have used it somewhere in all his posts.

Andy

[Divided he ad]

Personally if I want to find a certain users posts I firstly find the user in the "members" area found in  the blue bar just up there on the left.

Then I click on their name and in the resulting info box there is an option at the bottom to "Show the last posts of this person." This does exactly that.



However, if I am after a certain thing or subject say "Brass torches" I put it in the search (again, using the search function from the blue bar) I put the words in with the quotation marks and then hit enter... I do not touch any of the other fields. this brings up all the articles out there with that exact phrase in them, headings and posted text.

If I then type in "divided he ad" into the user box (deleting the *) as well as the above phrase/word and hit enter. It gives me the most probable matches for brass torches with divided he ad as a user.


Oddly the results for both searches don't always come up with the same pages?  Best to try both if you have enough info to do so.


hope this makes sense?







Ralph.