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To search DCCWiki:

• There should be a small search box at the side of the screen, marked search, followed by Go and Search. Just type what you're looking for into the search box and press the Enter key. Or, click Go or Search.

The difference between Go (same as enter) and Search is that Go first looks for an article with the given string as its title, and if one is found immediately goes to the indicated article. If Go fails to find an article, it then automatically executes Search which is a full-text search for the given words. Important search tips:

• When DCCWiki Search is disabled for performance reasons, Go can still be used to look up titled pages.

• Don't search for only words in quotes. Try the search without quotes first. If that's not good enough, put as many words as possible outside the quotes or add some more to narrow the search.

• While Go is usually, but not always, case insensitive, Search is always case insensitive. More detail about case sensitivity is provided below.

• Search is a treated as a secondary function of the MediaWiki software and is sometimes unreliable and even completely disabled for performance reasons. If you can't find something you're expecting to find, please try an external search engine.

[edit] External search engines

Various search engines can provide domain-specific searches, which lets you search DCCWiki specifically. Searches are based on the text as shown by the browser, so wiki markup is irrelevant. Depending on your browser, you may also be able to use tools that allow you to search DCCWiki using bookmarklets.

In general, external search engines are faster than a DCCWiki search. However, because the search engine's cache is based on when the site was indexed, the search may not return newly created pages. Similarly, the search engine's cached version of the page will not be as up-to-date as the link to DCCWiki itself. Also, when returning DCCWiki articles in a regular search, mirrors and forks of DCCWiki content frequently rank higher than the actual DCCWiki articles because of search engine optimization techniques.

These issues may be less of a problem when using certain search engines that process DCCWiki differently:

• Yahoo! includes DCCWiki as part of its content acquisition program and gets a regular datafeed.
• Clusty downloads and processes the database regularly, generating automatic abstracts and image thumbnails and meaningfully parsing redirects, disambiguations, and categories.

[edit] Google

By following the links below, you can use the Google search engine to search DCCWiki - either all languages, or English-only. Google indexes all namespaces.

• Search all DCCForAll (and it's Wiki) with Google

If you frequently search via Google, consider installing the Google Toolbar. Using the "search this site" button allows you to quickly search the English version of DCCWiki. The official Google Toolbar is for Internet Explorer Windows only) and for Firefox (works on all operating system platforms for which Firefox is available, such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X).

[edit] Yahoo!

By following the links below, you can use the Yahoo! search engine to search DCCWiki - either all languages or English-only.

• Search all DCCForall (and it's Wiki) with Yahoo!

If you frequently search via Yahoo!, consider installing the Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Using the "Search Only the Current Site" button allows you to quickly search the English version of DCCWiki. The official Yahoo! Companion Toolbar is only for Windows with Internet Explorer and Mozilla.

[edit] Limiting results

To limit to results that include all words, put a "+" at the beginning of each word: +search +engine returns only pages containing both words, like Google's default mode.

You can also do a phrase search by enclosing words in quotes: [1] turns up a smaller set of results, which not only have both words but have them in order.

To exclude results that include some word, put a "-" at the beginning: [2]]

[edit] Avoid short and common words

If your search terms include a common "stop word" (such as "the", "one", "your", "more", "right", "while", "when", "who", "which", "such", "every", "about") it will be ignored by the search system. If you're trying to do a phrase search or all-words-only search, this may result in returning nothing at all. Short numbers, and words that appear in half of all articles, will also not be found. In this case, drop those words and rerun the search.

[edit] Case sensitivity

Search is always case-insensitive, so searches for "fortran", "Fortran" and "FORTRAN" all return the same results.

Go is always case-insensitive for the first character of the article title, and in most cases for the entire title. Go is case-sensitive only if an article has a name including a mixture of capitalized and uncapitalized letters and is neither all initial cap or all lower case following the first word. For example, consider the article Introduction to DCC. Entering 'introductions to dcc' and pressing "enter" or Go will not find this article. However, 'Introduction to DCC' will find it, as will 'introduction to DCC'.

If the article name were 'Introduction to DCC' or 'Introduction to dcc' a search with any capitalization variant would find it. Redirects can be used to work around this problem.

[edit] Wildcards

You can use some limited wildcards if you really want to. Look up "fulltext search" on http://www.mysql.com/ and look down under 'boolean search' for the details. However, wildcard searches are slower, so go easy on the poor server.

[edit] Words in single quotes

If a word appears in an article with single quotes, you can only find it if you search for the word with quotes. Since this is rarely desirable it is better to use double quotes in articles, for which this problem does not arise. See the manual of style for more info.

An apostrophe is identical to a single quote, therefore Mu'ammar can be found searching for exactly that (and not otherwise). A word with apostrophe s is an exception in that it can be found also searching for the word without the apostrophe and the s.

[edit] Namespaces searched by default

The search only applies to the namespaces selected in the user's preferences. To search the other namespaces check or uncheck the tickboxes in "Search in namespaces" box found at the bottom of a search results page. Depending on the browser, a box may still be checked from a previous search, but without being effective any longer! To make sure, uncheck and recheck it.

Searching the image namespace means searching the image descriptions, i.e. the first parts of the image description pages.

[edit] Redirects can be excluded

Check or uncheck the tickbox "List redirects" in "Search in namespaces" box found at the bottom of a search results page.

[edit] Delay in updating the search index

For reasons of efficiency and priority, very recent changes are not always immediately taken into account in searches.

[edit] Using Mozilla to automatically search

Listed below are ways to search DCCWiki with Mozilla-based browsers, including Mozilla Suite, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape 6 and 7, and Beonex Communicator.

[edit] Search DCCWiki using a bookmarklet

Works with: Mozilla Suite, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape 6/7, Beonex Communicator.

DCCWiki can also be searched via a bookmarklet.

In Mozilla Firefox, follow these steps:

1. Right click in the search field at the top of the page, and select "Add a Keyword for this Search".
2. Enter "DCCWiki Quicksearch" for the name.
3. Enter "DCC" (without the quotes) for the keyword.
4. Change the bookmark folder if you wish, and click "Add".

In Mozilla Suite, Netscape 6/7 and Beonex Communicator, follow these steps:

1. Right click on the following web address and select "Bookmark this link": http://wiki.dccforall.com/Special:Search?search=%s
2. Go to Bookmarks, Manage Bookmarks. Choose the bookmark you have just created. Highlight the Bookmark and click Properties.
3. In the dialogue that comes up, put a lowercase w in the keyword box.
4. Click OK and close the properties box, then close the bookmark manager.

In Camino, use the Mozilla Suite directions. Use Get Info (cmd-I) in the bookmarks manager to bring up the properties dialogue.

To search, go to the web address bar, enter "dcc SEARCH_QUERY<i>" (without the quotes), and press enter.

user_pref("kmeleon.general.searchEngine", "http://wiki.dccforall.com/Special:Search?search="); 

user_pref("kmeleon.general.searchEngine", "http://wiki.dccforall.com/Special:Search?search="); 

[Search Engine ##]
Name=&DCCWiki
URL=http://wiki.dccforall.com/wiki.phtml?search=%s
Query=
Key=w
Is post=0
Has endseparator=0
Encoding=utf-8
Search Type=8

If there is no appropriate page on DCCWiki, consider creating a page, since you can edit DCCWiki right now.