Hi All!
I have received a number of queries from members wondering how I quickly find and reference old posts on the Forum. It's really very easy.
FROM WITHIN THE FORUM:[First, note the Forum home page lists a number of categories: Community, Technical, Miscellaneous, and Private Classified. Each of those have sub-categories. If you don't see them, just click on the "+" next to each heading to expand the category and see all sub-categories.]
The Thorn Forum is set-up for hierarchical searching. This means an entry in the "Search" box at the top of the page searches all topics, categories, and headings
below the one where the search is entered. The found search term will be highlighted in yellow. Here are some specific examples:
1) To search the entire Forum, first make sure you are at the Forum's root home page, titled "Thorn Cycling Forums" at
http://www.thorncycles.co.uk/forums/ Any entry in the search box from that level will search all entries in all categories for the keywords entered. Entering the word "torque" will pull up references in Non-Thorn related, Bike Bits/Accessories for Sale, Thorn General and General Technical and most other sub-categories.
2) To search a sub-category, first make sure you're in it. For example, if you wish to search for references to "torque" under "General Technical", make sure you are in General Technical when you enter the term.
3) To search an individual topic; as before, first make sure you're in it. All references to the search term by all contributors to the topic will be presented.
4) To search an individual post; you're better off using your browser's "Find" option, usually found under the "Edit" menu. Remember, this will search for terms on the currently viewed
page.
5) To search all posts by a given poster whenever reading a topic, click on the poster's name. You will be transported to their profile. At the bottom of their profile is a link labeled "Show the last posts of this person". Click on it, and that's what you'll see. The same kind of search can be conducted from any page on the Forum by clicking the blue "Members" tab at the top.
6) Having covered all these ways to search from within the Forum, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the blue SEARCH tab at the top of each page.
VIA THE SEARCH TAB Default Search:Entering a term in the default Search box there is the same as entering it on the Forum's root home page -- all posts from all posters matching the term will be presented.
VIA THE SEARCH TAB Advanced Search:The blue SEARCH tab also includes an option for "Advanced Search", which is really Command Central for all Forum searches. The Advanced Search option allows for inquires to be made by a number of search parameters, including...
- term/words
- matching
any or
all words
- by user
In addition, you can choose to...
- Show results as messages
- Search in topic subjects only
-...and specify an age-range for the message in days
Finally, you can choose an individual board to search in, or choose to search all boards.
VIEWING A USER'S POST HISTORY:7) If you wish to reference an individual post or send the link for it to yourself or others, you can do so by putting it "in focus". To do so, click on the title of the individual post and it will be "promoted" to the top of your browser page and its URL will appear in your browser's address bar. From there you can simply highlight it and copy it to your clipboard for pasting into another post or into your email client.
MORE SEARCH TIPS VIA HELP-TAB TUTORIAL:8 ) A complete tutorial on searches is available from the blue HELP tab at the top of each page, or directly from this link:
http://www.thorncycles.co.uk/forums/index.php?action=help;page=searchingThere you have it; all you need to know to make speedy, comprehensive searches of the Thorn Forum and find the information you want, soonest.
Hope this helps.
Best,
Dan.
