Too many people go through forums clueless spamming the New Thread button for their every whim, now LEARN!
Note: If something is hard to read, highlight it with your mouse.
I.(Pretend this is in yellow text)As I always say, use the search button as a LAST resort. FAQs, that's FREQUENT!, and stickies first. Now that I've previewed this I realize that yellow is hard to read, good thing I have little to explain here, click to get to the search screen, BEFORE the new thread button.
II. Now, I trust people who can sign up for forums are literate, so you can read. The vital point here is the asterisk (i.e. *) which is very helpful if you can only remember part of what you need. Now this is part of a word, not a phrase or clause.
III. Keywords is what you want to search for, this searches for everything, thread title and all posts. Author searches for names, once again refer to II. asterisk if you can only remember part of a name. This is MUCH more helpful than searching through the members list. 'Author' is EVERYONE that has every posted so it is not just thread starters, therefore you can find anyone.
IV. The first button is easy to comprehend but the second one is the BEST option for multi-word searches. If you can recall more than one word said in a row than type all of them in and select 'Search for all Terms' which will narrow your search down dramatically as it searches for all the inputed characters. Now, a warning is do NOT use multi word searches with a wild card search (i.e. *), I find it MORE difficult to find what I am looking for.
V. If you are searching for a topic then you should select topic. If you are searching for a specific post or a person, then you will want a post display.
VI. Self-explanatory. Post time is helpful to decrease results further. The topic title/message thrives if you know whether you need a thread or a particular post. Return post count, you'll always want that at the highest, which is 1000.
VII. From the image above the green area shows the forums. If you can remember what you are looking or can guess where the thread or post you are looking for is located than select the forum it is in, this will help you cut down your search results dramatically.
VIII. If you do not know what forum it is in, then skip step five and put in the category. The above image boxes in cyan the categories. If you select one then it will reduce results and help you find your target. Note: If you select a Forum then logically filling out the Category is exorbitant.
IX. CTRL+F ; APPLE+F! After you receive results and see that you have 9284 do NOT read through all of them. If you even know one word in the title, then use the magic buttons and input the word, then search page through page, saves you loads of time.
Will update for phpBB 3.0 sometime probably never, although most of the points still stand, just replace some symbols.
