*Edit by Kristine: in the new forum layout, the link to the search page is in the center of the long green tool bar above.

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Last year, when I found this website, I spent the first few days on the search page. I came close to wearing out that poor button. It occurred to me today that while I am not unique in my nosiness perhaps not everyone is a comfortable poking around online. Hopefully you'll find something useful from this post.

The Search Page

For those of you who have never visited the search page, it can be reached by clicking on the globe icon () located in the upper right hand corner of every page and it looks like this: SEARCH

Basic searching usually entails entering the keyword that you are interested in and clicking 'submit'. What if you're looking for information on Potassium? You're going to get a lot more information than a) you bargained for and b) you need. There are ways of whittling the output to something more manageable.

Search Options:

One of the greatest options is located under the "Search Forums" pull down menu; "Show results as posts". This will give you a preview of the actual post, very useful if you are looking for something you've read before. Using the "Search titles only" can help you narrow down a particular thread, searching for a thread called "Potassium" is likely to provide useful information.

Choosing the forum to search will also help narrow things down - sometimes quite considerably. Think of all the posts you'd get from the journal forums if you were looking for "breakfast" ideas and left the default to "Search All Open Forums". Changing the option to the "Kitchen: Low Carb Recipes" will result in recipes and not just members' listed breakfast choices, narrowing it further is possible by choosing "Breafast Ideas" from the pull down box.

Searching for posts within a specific time period is another option I use frequently. If you have your setup programmed to show posts from the last 5 or 10 days something from 2 weeks ago isn't going to appear - knowing the approximate time the desired information was posted will help further narrow down your results.

Sorting results by ascending or descending order factors into the time frame option - if you narrow the search to two weeks ago and you're pretty sure the post in question was from that time then you'd want to see the oldest posts first.

It is also possible to "Search By User Name". This can be a search for posts by a specific member or it can be used to further narrow down your results - I often look for information on medical issues by Doreen, supplements by Trainerdan and carb addiction by Karen and Razzle.

If you've tried all of these and you're still coming up blank try using the wildcard (asterisk) option. Often spelling can effect your results. For example, some spell "Colour" with a 'u', but it is also spelled without. Looking for information on Ketostix and the colour purple would be more effective phrased [ keto AND colo* AND purple ]. Using "AND" specifies that all words must be contained in the posts displayed.

As with everything, the more you use the feature the more comfortable you'll be with it. Asking questions is always encouraged, but knowing how to find the information yourself is very empowering.

Nat