How do I search the forums effectively?

The Bulletin Boards search function contains some powerful options to enhance your query if you search for more than 1 word.

Let's say that your search terms are mushrooms, friend, and grow.

If you want to run a search for posts that contain ALL of those terms, you must enter the terms like this:

+mushrooms +grow +friend

Make sure to include a space between the search terms preceded by the + .
This will bring back a list of posts that contain ALL 3 of these terms in them.

If, however you want to run a search that will bring you to posts that explain ANY of those terms, you would have to enter the terms like this:

mushrooms grow friend

This will bring back posts that contain the words mushrooms OR grow OR friend or any combination of those.

Another example:

mushrooms +grow friend

You will get posts that MUST contain the word grow but can also contain EITHER mushrooms OR friend or both.

If you are searching for an exact phrase like 'My friend knows how to grow a lot of mushrooms', you would put double quotes around the terms:

“My friend knows how to grow a lot of mushrooms”.

By searching for something like this

+mushrooms +friend –grow

you will get results for posts that DO contain both the words mushrooms and friend but DO NOT contain the word grow.

-grow –mushrooms –friend

would give you a list of posts that contain none of the words, neither grow, nor mushrooms, or friend.

In order to get the search results faster, you should also specify which part of the boards you want to be searched in "Forum(s) to search" .
For instance, if you search for anything that has to do with mushroom cultivation, you should specify the Mushroom Cultivation forum and the Advanced Mushroom Cultivation forum.
Multiple forums can be selected with the mouse. If a category is chosen all forums within that category will be searched.

You can further restrict the result by entering a username into the "Username search" to find only posts made by a particular user.(in addition to the search terms specified above or without any search terms)

For a different explanation read How to Use the New Search Engine

by Senor Doobie