SANParks.org Forums

Many people have trouble finding topics or posts while there is a search-engine that works quite good, as long as you know how to work it. So a little tutorial on how to work it.
The search function can be found in the top of all the forumpages, it is not the same as the search in the lefthandcorner of the site under the SANParkslogo! (That one searches the site, not the forums.)
When you hit that link you'll see this on your screen (I left out the sides etc.):

Note the numbers in red, I'll guide you through them.

1. The searchterm(s) you want to use.

In the text before it you can read:

Or in other words, you can search for "lion +kill", giving you posts where both words are used,
"[lion | kill]", giving you posts where one of the words is used, or
"lion -kill", giving you posts where you find lion, but are childfriendly as there will be no kill in it.
The | can on most keyboards be found above the Enterkey.

Let's skip ahead a little
I'm using the word post for the thing you are looking for, but it could also be a topic. The red 8 at the right is next to the option "Display results as". You can select Posts or Topics there. The default is Posts, handy if you are looking for a specific post. More later.

Refine your search
At the moment of writing just the word "lion" gives 1016 matches, which may be a little too many to find the specific post or topic you want to find. So we need to use a few tricks. The obvious one is to use more keywords. You read somewhere that someone saw oxpeckers were sitting on a lion for instance, and want to find that post. Search for lion and oxpecker would certainly give you less hits. But you can do more!
Have a look at the searchscreen again.

There is a "Search for Author" field, marked as 2. If you know that a member called Scleroptila (The latin familyname for the birdgroup Francolin) made the post you are looking for, fill that in, and only the posts by that member will be searched.
A very handy option there is the "Use * as a wildcard for partial matches" one. I can imagine that the name Scleroptila will result in quite a few typo's, which means that the system will not find any posts! But just typing Scl* there is enough. You will be searching in more posts, those made by all the membernames starting with scl.

I don't know the author
No problem, did you see the forum list marked 3? And you know in which forum it was posted? In that case hit the list, and scroll to the forum where the post is supposed to be. Select that, and only that forum will be searched.

Search subforums
If you keep it set to Yes, the forum you just picked, and all fora beneath it will be searched.

I don't know the forum
Well, then you will have to see the maximum amount of results. Use as many keywords as you know so you get less results.

The results
The options under 5 and 6 can be very handy. As you can see you can have the results sorted in different ways, here is the box with options:

That could get you quicker to the post you're looking for, but the option under 6 might be even better:

This limits the results a lot, remember the forums started filling in 2004!

Search within
The field I marked as 7 is probably one you will not change often, and I think the options are clear...

Display results as
Posts or Topics, that's the question.... If you are looking for a specific post you should choose Posts, if however you are looking for a topic on something choose Topic.

Return first xx characters of posts
The last option, marked as 9 in the screenshot above.
The All Characters can be handy if the word you searched for is mentioned later than the maximum 1000 you can fill in. However! If for instance you have one or more Travel Tale(s) in your results it'll load the whole post, graphics and all!
The default is 300 characters, adjust to what you need.


That is the works for searching using the build in search. There is however another option, using google. Using just google will swamp you in results from all over the world, so I created a slimmed down version which searches the forums only.
This link will bring you there. Remember that with google it is possible to search within results!

Please use the knowledge to search before you post, the answer to your question is often posted already!

A little update, as google is allowed back on the site you can use it again, making searching possibly even easier.

There are 2 custom searchengines I made,
Forum search and
Search the whole site.

These do not include other sites, so should make life easier.

For those using Firefox, let's make it even easier...

Download and install the Add to searchbar plugin. After restarting Firefox visit the two links in the previous post, and when the pages are loaded rightclick in the entrybox, (where you type your search), and click the Add to searchbar option. Name and such are filled in, change if you want to.
Now by just choosing searchengine will let you search site or forum.

I currently don't have an Internet Explorer 7 version handy, but I know it's possible to enter those 2 engines fairly easily, so maybe someone can type that?

An excellent idea and tutorial DQ

Using Firefox? Then there is another nifty thing you can use to search the site quickly. It uses whichever search engine you like, but I'll use two easy ones to explain it.

First the normal search engine we have on the site here. Right click in the little input box (Top left, under the logo.) You'll see something like this:

You may have fewer or more things installed, but the important bit is the one in blue: Add a Keyword for this search.
Select this and a little window pops up, called Add bookmark.
I called it Sanparks, with as keyword sa. The keyword is the important bit, remember it!

Now if you need to search the site, just type keyword and search word(s) in the url-bar, like this:

and hit enter.
The results just like if you had used the little box on the top of the page. In the examples case there will most likely be few hits....

Handy? Maybe not in this search engine, but were you to do it on this customised Google it would save you a lot of time!

(I use cg as keyword for this, Customised Google.)
The beauty of this is that you do not need to be on this site, anyplace you are on the Web just hit keyword and search phrase, and the results pop up!