Search And Advanced Search Tutorial  

Learn how to:

1. Use the Basic Search Mode
2. Use the Advanced Search
3. Using Boolean Operators And Wildcards In Search

Use the Basic Search Mode

How To Execute a Basic Search

1. At the top of every page on Home Theater Forum, you will see the search bar below the header tabs.
2. Enter your search keywords into the search bar.
3. Click the "Search" button.
4. Your results will display on several different tabs, divided up by the different types of content.  The first tab will show all of the results across the site (in order of relevance based on keyword density or in other words, how frequently those words are repeated).  The following tabs will display any Products, Reviews, Threads, Category, Images, Users, and Wikis that have those search terms in their names, in the body of the text, etc.  If one of those does not appear, there is no search result for that type of content.

Choosing Your Search Keywords

As you are thinking about typing in your keywords for a search on Home Theater Forum, there are a few important things to consider.

1. The search engine will equally weigh each word and display results that include both words at some point in the thread, wiki, image name, user name, etc.  For example, if you search "Speaker Placement" using the basic search mode, all of your results will have both "speaker" and "placement" somewhere on the page.
2. If you use quotations around your search terms (for example, entering ""Speaker Placement""), the search engine will search for that phrase, rather than for the words individually.

Use the Advanced Search

How To Execute An Advanced Search

1) You can specify which of the forums and sub-forums you would like to search.  Simply click on the forum or sub-forum you would like to search within.  If you chose to search within a forum that holds sub-forums, all of these will be searched.  If you would like to select multiple forums or sub-forums, hold down the Control (Ctrl) key on your keyboard and click on each forum/sub-forum you would like to add.  You should see each one highlighted in turn.  By default, unless you specify particular forums you would like to search, the search engine will search across all forums.
 

1. Navigate to the Advanced Search form by clicking the button of the Advanced Search button below the Basic Search bar.
2. Enter your Keywords into the Keywords text bar. 
3. Using these keywords, you can search the full text of the content or you can search titles only.
4. You can also choose to search for content from a specific user (you can also access all of their posts from their user profile).  Enter one user name here - entering in more than one user or an incorrectly spelled user name will result in "User not found" and search results excluding this criteria.  If you leave this field blank, you will get results from all users (this is the default setting).
5. In the Narrow Results section, you can either search the entire site or posts only.  Here is additional information about these options:
6. From here you have many options to narrow down your results.  On the Advanced Search form, there are multiple fields for further search criteria.  You may enter criteria into all of these fields, some of them, or none of them. 2) You can narrow down your search results based on the number of posts/replies in the thread.  You can specify a minimum number of replies (select "At Least" from the drop down menu and enter in a number of replies, for example threads with "At Least 2 Replies"); or you can specify a maximum number of replies select "At Most" from the drop down menu and enter in a number of replies, for example threads with "At Most 10 Replies").  The default setting is to look for all threads, regardless of whether or not there are any replies.
   
   3) You can specify a time frame for threads (or posts, if you are searching individual posts - see section 6 below).  You can find threads that are from yesterday or newer, one week ago or newer, two weeks ago or newer, one month ago or newer, three months ago or newer, six months ago or newer, or within the last year (select the time frame from the first drop down menu and "and newer" from the second).  You can also search for threads that are older than any of those time periods (i.e. one month ago and older or from before one year ago).  By default, the search engine will look for threads and posts from any posting date.
   
   4) You can sort results based on relevancy, number of replies, thread start date, or last posting date.  You can also sort those results in descending or ascending order.  The default setting is based on relevancy in descending order with the most relevant terms at the top (based on keyword density).
   
   
7. When you are ready, click the "Search" button at the bottom of the search form.
8. Your results will display on several different tabs, divided up by the different types of content.  The first tab will show all of the results across the site.  The following tabs will display any Products, Reviews, Threads, Category, Images, Users, and Wikis that match your search criteria.

Choosing Your Search Keywords

As you are thinking about typing in your keywords for an advanced search on Home Theater Forum, there are a few important things to consider.

1. The search engine looks at keyword density when pulling up results and ranking them in order of relevance.  This means that if you search "Speaker Placement" with the advanced search tool, every Product, Review, Thread, Category Image, User, and Wiki with EITHER of those words will appear, diluting the results with results just about speakers (and not at all about speaker placement specifically).  Based on the keyword density search, the search engine will display an article/thread/etc. that mentions one of those words 100 times before it displays a result with one mention of both of those words.  To help improve your search results, remove commonly used words like "TV", "speaker" or "player" which will dilute your results.
2. If you use quotations around your search terms (for example, entering ""Speaker Placement""), the search engine will search for that phrase, rather than for the words individually.

Using Boolean Operators And Wildcards In Search

Boolean Operators and wildcards can help you modify your search results.  Please note, Boolean operators and wildcards can ONLY be used on the Advanced Search form.  They are not used in the Basic Search.
 

For additional advanced search modifiers and operators, read about query syntax on Apache Lucene.