How to search the Avlis Forum

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Avlis Search and Bug Tracker Hints and Tips

by Tissa

To help support Velvet's great idea I thought I would toy with the search and start a thread listing what I find. Hopefully this can be a point to gather ideas, hints, and tips from other users of the Avlis search tools. Also we could post things that we have tried to search for (along with any options we used) and had undesirable results

Basic Search of Avlis Forums

From any page on the avlis web site, under the banner you should have a list of options: 

 Home | Forum | Servers | Search | Bug Tracker | Groups | Profile | No new messages | Log out [ username ]

Click Search, it will take you to the avlis forum Search page. If you have a specific single word to describe exactly what you're looking for type it into the [color=green]Search Query : Search for Keywords :[/color] field and hit the <INPUT type=submit name=btnG VALUE="Search"> button (near the bottom of the page). This will take you to a results page listing all the threads containing your word in the topic or at least in the body of one of the posts. At the top of the page it will display the total matches found. The list will be sorted by post time, the thread with the most resent post being first (note the most resent post may have nothing to do with what you are searching for.)

Important things to note about Avlis forum search engine:

  • The search engine ignores all capitalization.
  • The search engine ignores the order and location of the words in the post when you give it more than one, so it can't find specific phrases.
  • Without wildcards the search engine only finds exact matches. For example the search engine treats "dryads" and "dryad" as different words.
  • You can give it part of a word with a wildcard.

Controlling your Search

Choosing Keywords :

  • Avlis forum searches are NOT case sensitive.
  • For example, searches for "dryad", "Dryad", and "dRyAd" will all return the same results.
  • The order of the key words is not relevant
  • There is no way to search for a phase
  • All the words must appear in a single post
  • Try the obvious first. If you're looking for information on Gorethar, enter "gorethar" rather than "deities ".
  • Use specific words to describe exactly what you're looking for. More general terms will give a larger number of results.
  • Use words likely to appear on a post with the information you want. "inn elysia" gets better results than "available places to spend the night in elysia"
  • Make sure to watch for words with more than one meaning. If you're looking for information on modeling, make sure you specify "fashion" or "clay."


[b]Making sure you find everything you are looking for (Using Wildcards): [/b] It is important to note the search will match whole words. So [color=brown][i]dryad[/i][/color] will not match [color=brown][i]dryads[/i][/color]. To make it match both enter [color=brown][i]dryad*[/i][/color] as the keyword. This will match dryad followed by zero or more characters. Also [color=brown][i]dryad[/i][/color] will not match [color=brown][i]half-dryad[/i][/color] we could do [color=brown][i]*dryad[/i][/color] but having the wildcard at the front of the word seems to make the search take a lot longer and it might be faster to do with multiple keywords. You can also input [color=brown][i]*dryad*[/i][/color] to get dryad no matter how it is imbedded in the message, but again doing this is very slow. Other uses of wildcards could be to allow alternate spellings and forms such matching ?Gorethar?, ?Gorethan?, and ?Gorethite? in which case you could use ?Goreth*?.

Using multiple keywords:

First off lets look at trying to find a specific phrase, for example say we want to find out if there is any information on a drangonari language. If we enter [i]drangonari language[/i] into the keyword field and hit the search button we will match every post that has either word in it (in my last search this was 483 matches). Now what we want 

if we enter deities family relations and hit the search button we will find every topic that containing just one of the words deities, family or relations any where in them (which in my last search was 871). If we click the radio button ?search for all terms? we will only match those topics that contain all three words in a single post or topic heading. (there was only one when I did the search)

So to do the half-dryad* dryad*

Limiting your search to a specific Forum or group of Forums:

Using the forums and the ten forum categories provides another way to target the exact results you're looking for. [list][*][b]The Avlis Project[/b] [NwN][list][*]Avlis News [*]The Avlis Project: General Discusion [*]The Avlis Project: World Information[list][*][b]The Avlis Project: Information[/b][/list] [*]The Avlis Project: In Character[list][*] [b]Avlis Taverns[/b] [*] [b]Avlis Marketplace[/b] [*] [b]Journal[/b][/list] [*]The Avlis Project: Private Discussions[list][*][b]Avlis Classes and Styles[/b] [*][b]Avlis Guilds and Groups[/b] [*][b]Avlis Armies and Fiefdoms[/b][/list] [*]The Avlis Project: Development [list][*] [b]The Avlis Project Development[/b] [/list] [*]Avlis Polls [*]The Avlis Project: Ask the Team [/list] [*][b]General Forums[/b] [list][*][NWN General Discusion [*]NWN Scripting [*]Random Discussions [*]Rants & Raves[/list][/list]

If you are getting too much information try focusing on a single forum that might be best suited for you query. Say you want to find all the wedding announcement that have been posted in Elysia. You could enter wed* announcement* and ?

For example let us say we want to look at all the times something has been attacked and there was a call to take up arms. We could enter the keywords [i]attacked arms[/i] and then since we want to look at the actual in character posts lets focus on the Taverns by clicking on the drop down box [b]Category:[/b] and select [i]Avlis Taverns[/i]

[b]Limiting you search based on time of last post[/b] This is a very good thing to do if you know what you are looking for didn?t exists before some time.

[b] Arranging the output [/b]

Basic Search of Avlis Bug Tracking database

From any page on the [url=http://www.avlis.org/portal.php]Avlis[/url] web site, under the banner you should have a list of options: 

Home | Forum | Servers | Search | Bug Tracker | Groups | Profile | No new messages | Log out [ username ]

Click [url=http://www.avlis.org/bugs/] [b]Bug Tracker[/b][/url], it will take you to the avlis forum Bug Tracking page. Under the banner and the main option list you should see a new list of options for the bug tracker.

[size=11]Avlis Bug Tracker Home | Add a new Bug | [url=http://www.avlis.org/bugs/query.php?op=query][b]Query Bugs[/b][/url] | View Reports | Read Documentation Find Bug[/size]

Click on [url=http://www.avlis.org/bugs/query.php?op=query][b]Query Bugs[/b][/url]. You are now on the simple query page. Scroll to the bottom of this page and click on the link "Go to the [url=http://www.avlis.org/bugs/query.php?op=query&form=advanced][b]advanced query page[/b][/url]". Type a word or words that are key to what you are searching for in the [color=green]Summary:[/color] field. As an example to find the status of any bugs related to the custom character creator try inputting "custom" into the [color=green]Summary:[/color] field. Change the [color=green]Sort By[/color] to "[i]Bug Number[/i]" and "[i]Descending[/i]". Then click on the <INPUT type=submit name=btnG VALUE="Submit query"> button.

you can also look [url=http://www.avlis.org/bugs/docs/html/userguide.html]here[/url] for more information on the Avlis bug tracker[/quote]

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