[new members] Forum search tips

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HB
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Joined: 19 years ago

#1: Post by HB »

As noted in the site's Guidelines for productive online discussion, long-time members are more likely to offer thoughtful responses to newcomers if some initial research is done beforehand. The tips below can help your searches be more fruitful:
  • FAQs and Favorites - Open the FAQs and Favorites (digest) or FAQs and Favorites (unabridged). Type Ctrl+F to open the browser's search entry field. Type a broad keyword (e.g., "temperature" or "portafilter"). In Firefox, click the Highlight all checkbox. Skim the page by clicking Next; often you'll find your answer within the first 4-5 matches.
    • Native search - although search engines like Google do a fine job indexing the site, the native search is sometimes better. For example, the native search checks for common site-specific abbreviations (e.g., PF, OPV) and can search by author. The default display for results is by posts, which may return too many pages for broad searches. Try switching to Display result as: Topics. If you have a good idea of the topic title, limit the search to it by selecting Search within: Topic titles only. Similar strategies can be used to search by author. The native search also supports limited expressions like NOT (e.g., the search "izzo alex -duetto" searches "izzo alex" by topic title only and excludes "duetto").
      • Search engines - You can narrow search engine's scope by specifying with the site:home-barista.com parameter. For example, Google's measure brew temperature site:home-barista.com. For your convenience, the site's search window includes a custom Google search field (the "native" phpBB search field is directly below it).
        • Image searches - To search for specific images, go to Google images and enter your search keywords to narrow the list of images shown (e.g., "bottomless portafilter").
        Dan Kehn