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[FredInChina]

Tutorial: How to use the search function:
Osu!

There are many reasons you want to use the K4L build in forum search function; I list a few here, but if you think of other reasons of importance, please tell us all:

• Looking for specific information about a technique, a fighter, etc...
• Looking for a dojo in your area (use the dojo directory & one ring)
• Verify if the question you are about to ask has been answered before
• Verify if a subject has already been debated before opening a new thread.
• Verify if there is an adequate existing thread to post your info or comment before opening a new thread.
• Want to purchase some goodies? K4L store!
• Searching how to become a support member?

The K4L forum represents thousand of hours of patiently compiled information accessible to all in a few clicks. It is a huge and fully search able database on knock down & full contact karate, as well as many other forms of Martial Arts.

Great! but WHERE IS THE SEARCH BUTTON???
The search button is right under the Kyokushin4life .com header,
in the row of buttons, between Community & Quick Links.

The search function allows you to search threads or posts; most of the time, you will search for a thread.
You can choose to search the title or the full body of the thread... It is usually preferable to search in the full body.

1- looking for something specific:
Type in the key words that represent best what you are looking for & conduct a search. You will get a list of threads which will be short or long (sometimes over several pages) depending on the choice of key words and/or if the subject was often debated.
The more precise your key words, the better your results will be.

2- If you did not find what you wanted, try more or other key words --- once again, the more precise your key words, the narrower the results you will get.

3- Still did not find your results?
Go to "advanced search"... there you will be offered several other options to narrow down your search (dates, author, etc...)

4- You found your thread, but are looking for a specific post of some specific info: Use the Search This Thread option located in the header of the thread.

TIPS:

• When looking for a recently viewed thread, I usually find it easy to go to the last 24 hours posts list (it appears when you click on the (more...) button that is on the unread posts page once you have cleared the list. (Note to Admin: a last 24/48/week list of posts might be a good addition somewhere in the advanced search page)
• When I know who opened the thread I am looking for, it is easier to go to that person's page, click on statistics, threads open by this user ----> gives you the list of threads opened by this user; top of page is the last active.
• When I know who posted a post I am looking for, AND it is recent, it is often easier to go to that person's page, click on statistics, posts posted by this user ----> gives you the list of posts opened by this user, with the first few words of the post; top of page is the last posted.
• A wise choice of Keywords: Keywords must be over 4 characters. The more specific the better... say you are looking for Seienchin Kata, you could search using kata, but with this keyword, you will likely have many threads, most irrelevant. A search on Seienchin is better, a search on Seienchin & kata is the best... Please note some spelling variations & that you could also search on Seiunchin in this case (need more or better examples here...)
• A search on DISCOMBOBULATE will likely bring up very few threads... try it!
• There are tools that you can use to avoid a search: In the header of each thread, you can subscribe to a thread in the other tools menu... the thread you subscribe to appear somewhere in your profile (someone please tells us precisely where??)
  

Enjoy the power of the search... Good posting everyone

osu!




PS to Mods, Admins & Good Wills:
- This tutorial requires examples of good & bad keywords; please someone steps up to the plate.
- A list of often debated topics with links to relevant threads would be VERY USEFUL (KakatoOtoshi's work in many a new thread is a great start for that)
- A FAQ would be useful too.
- A tutorial to explain when & how to start a new thread and when & how NOT to would be great too & linked to this search tutorial. (include the use of appropriate title and tags in this one.)
- A frequently opened New Thread Topics.

- this tutorial needs polishing, I am not very good at teaching birds to fly...

[wullie]

Cheers Fred, tried to rep you but it was a no go

[jcarmello]

repped!!! and thank you! Osu!!

[KvW]

Repped. Good idea, Fred. Just what we need.


Osu!

[FredInChina]

Thanks Wullie, JCarmello & KvW, reps & intents appreciated.
osu!

[meguro]

Thanks Fred. I mean really, thanks-there's no more thanks button and I need to spread the rep around before repping you.

If K4L is suffering a mod shortage, I'm nominating Fred.

[kyokushin4life]

Thanks Fred. We appreciate it.

Osu.

i will remember to add this to somewhere more visible to everyone soon.

[wullie]

Originally Posted by meguro

.....If K4L is suffering a mod shortage, I'm nominating Fred.

I'll second that!

[kyokushin4life]

How To button has been added in the top menu.

[bobh]

If you like using Google:
I've had much better search results using google. From a regular google search you can start it off with site:kyokushin4life.com and you will only get results from this site.

If you need to add restrictions based on post information (like date) then use Advanced Search. If you are searching in general, this way is very effective and unleashes the power of Google!



More search help for Advanced Search

From Google:
The Basic search help article covers all the most common issues, but sometimes you need a little bit more power. This document will highlight the more advanced features of Google Web Search. Have in mind though that even very advanced searchers, such as the members of the search group at Google, use these features less than 5% of the time. Basic simple search is often enough. As always, we use square brackets [ ] to denote queries, so [ to be or not to be ] is an example of a query; [ to be ] or [ not to be ] are two examples of queries.

• Phrase search ("")
  By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change. Google already uses the order and the fact that the words are together as a very strong signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so quotes are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results accidentally. For example, a search for [ "Alexander Bell" ] (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell.
• Terms you want to exclude (-)
  Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the query [ anti-virus software ], the minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the query [ anti-virus -software ] will search for the words 'anti-virus' but exclude references to software. You can exclude as many words as you want by using the - sign in front of all of them, for example [ jaguar -cars -football -os ]. The - sign can be used to exclude more than just words. For example, place a hyphen before the 'site:' operator (without a space) to exclude a specific site from your search results.
• Fill in the blanks (*)
  The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results about many of Google's products (go to next page and next page -- we have many products). The query [ Obama voted * on the * bill ] will give you stories about different votes on different bills. Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.
• Search exactly as is (+)
  Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example, childcare for the query [ child care ] (with a space), or California history for the query [ ca history ]. But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don't really want it. By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around a single word will do the same thing.
• The OR operator
  Google's default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. If you want to specifically allow either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type 'OR' in ALL CAPS). For example, [ San Francisco Giants 2004 OR 2005 ] will give you results about either one of these years, whereas [ San Francisco Giants 2004 2005 ] (without the OR) will show pages that include both years on the same page. The symbol | can be substituted for OR. (The AND operator, by the way, is the default, so it is not needed.)

Exceptions

Search is rarely absolute. Search engines use a variety of techniques to imitate how people think and to approximate their behavior. As a result, most rules have exceptions. For example, the query [ for better or for worse ] will not be interpreted by Google as an OR query, but as a phrase that matches a (very popular) comic strip. Google will show calculator results for the query [ 34 * 87 ] rather than use the 'Fill in the blanks' operator. Both cases follow the obvious intent of the query. Here is a list of exceptions to some of the rules and guidelines that were mentioned in this and the Basic Search Help article:
Exceptions to 'Every word matters'

• Words that are commonly used, like 'the,' 'a,' and 'for,' are usually ignored (these are called stop words). But there are even exceptions to this exception. The search [ the who ] likely refers to the band; the query [ who ] probably refers to the World Health Organization -- Google will not ignore the word 'the' in the first query.
• Synonyms might replace some words in your original query. (Adding + before a word disables synonyms.)
• A particular word might not appear on a page in your results if there is sufficient other evidence that the page is relevant. The evidence might come from language analysis that Google has done or many other sources. For example, the query [ overhead view of the bellagio pool ] will give you nice overhead pictures from pages that do not include the word 'overhead.'

Punctuation that is not ignored

• Punctuation in popular terms that have particular meanings, like [ C++ ] or [ C# ] (both are names of programming languages), are not ignored.
• The dollar sign ($) is used to indicate prices. [ nikon 400 ] and [ nikon $400 ] will give different results.
• The hyphen - is sometimes used as a signal that the two words around it are very strongly connected. (Unless there is no space after the - and a space before it, in which case it is a negative sign.)
• The underscore symbol _ is not ignored when it connects two words, e.g. [ quick_sort ]

[jcarmello]

Thanks again bobh!!! I am outta rep though!

[wullie]

Originally Posted by jcarmello

Thanks again bobh!!! I am outta rep though!

got him JC! also got that search function to work far better than the K4L one.

[sandman]

Bobh and Fred - tried, but couldn't rep either one of you. Thanks for putting in the extra effort to make K4L easier to use

[Hangtime]

Originally Posted by jcarmello

Thanks again bobh!!! I am outta rep though!

Covered. Thanks BobH and FredInChina!

OSU!

[harukaze]

Good reps to Fred and Bob. But... I just can't believe it wasn't kakatootoshi that wrote this thread!

[FredInChina]

Thank you Harukaze, always appreciated.
Thank you to the mod/mods/admin that "stickied" it too...

osu!

[harukaze]

Just acknowledging a job well done!

[kakatootoshi]

Originally Posted by harukaze

Good reps to Fred and Bob. But... I just can't believe it wasn't kakatootoshi that wrote this thread!

I cannot believe it either.
Thanks to FredInChina and bobh.

And I might add while adding it to the "How To" button helps to make this tutorial more accessible in some ways, perhaps some kind of notification can be sent to people when they first register or post? And I mean the kind of notification that people will read, not the long list of things (privacy polices?)which we have to go through before becoming the member of many other websites which many of us will just skip and check "yes to all"?

Successfully repped bobh but no such luck for FredInChina.

[sandman]

Originally Posted by kakatootoshi

I cannot believe it either.
Thanks to FredInChina and bobh.

And I might add while adding it to the "How To" button helps to make this tutorial more accessible in some ways, perhaps some kind of notification can be sent to people when they first register or post? And I mean the kind of notification that people will read, not the long list of things (privacy polices?)which we have to go through before becoming the member of many other websites which many of us will just skip and check "yes to all"?

Successfully repped bobh but no such luck for FredInChina.

Maybe it can set up to to display something like rep points every time we use the search function

[jcbel]

Originally Posted by meguro

...there's no more thanks button...

Ummm, what happened to the thanks button???