Community MX is dedicated to helping you work smarter and faster. To that end, we have merged our two searching mechanisms -- the Keyword Search, which searches the article descriptions of all the Community MX articles, and the Full-Text Search, which uses ColdFusion's Verity search engine to search the article text. In addition to searching the article descriptions of all the articles, it also searches all of the supporting documents that ship with each article we publish. The Full-Text Search is particularly beneficial when you need to search for a code snippet that you remembered reading but can't remember exactly where. All code examples included for the articles are searched when using the Full-Text Search.
Choose to use the Full-Text search by clicking "Yes" to "Search inside all articles"
Search inside all articles: Yes No
The Search
The keyword search is offered in basic and advanced modes. The basic mode is what you'll get when you simply enter words or phrases in the Search CMX box found on most pages in the site.
The keyword search searches the Community MX content database for matches that contain all of the words in the search box. Since the search returns results that match all words, the easiest way to narrow down a search is to simply add more search words.
For example, if you were to search for:
The search returns all results that contain the 3 letter combination ASP. That might return a lot of results, so to further narrow your search add more search words:
Now, only those entries that match all three of these words come back as a match: in other words, the article must contain ASP, SQL, and VBScript somewhere in the article description.
Additionally, after you have completed a search, you will see a link to Search within results. This gives you the option to enter another term into the search box to further narrow down your search.
You can also search for phrases. Just put quotes around the search term:
In this case, because the phrase has quotes around it, the Community MX site is searched for the phrase html tags. Entries that contain only html or only tags are not returned with the search results, nor are entries that contain both words but not as a phrase.
The basic keyword search also allows you to use the words and and or. You can enter something like this:
In this case, the search results contain entries that match any of the words listed. Using the word and has no effect because the basic keyword search always returns results that contain all words. This search:
is the same as this search:
The basic keyword search can be conducted from anywhere on the site. The Advanced search is available from the main search page at http://www.communitymx.com/search.cfm. Clicking the Advanced link will bring up a couple of extra criteria selections.
The first option below the search box allows you to display Long results or Short results. The Long result option gives you a full title, link, description, date, author name, and keyword list for the search result. The Short result gives you just a title, date, and link.
You can Search In specific sections of Community MX:
- Article
- Tutorial
- FAQ
- Review
- Extension
- Daily Tips
- Weekly Tips
- Knowledge Base
- Blog
You can also Return Results From content that has been created within a certain time period:
- Past Day
- Past Week
- Past Month
- Past 3 Months
You can search In Category using the dropdown that allows searches of specific categories, such as Dreamweaver, Flash, or CSS.
You can search articles Written By a specific author.
You can match Any words, all words, or exact phrase.
Searches always default to the all words search, which shows only matches that contain each and every word in the search box. By clicking any, you can create any word searches that match the functionality of the following:
In other words, by clicking "Any words", you can create OR-type searches without using the word OR:
Show How Many Results allows you to display 10 records, 20 records, 50 records, or 100 records per page of results.
Reader Level allows you to search for a specific level of expertise for an article, such as Beginner or Advanced.
Finally, you can Sort By specific items, such as the publish date or author name, and also Order By descending or ascending order.
The buttons below the search settings allow you to Save or Clear your search preferences so that next time you do a search at Community MX, your preference settings will be remembered. Note that you need to have cookies turned on in your browser in order for this to work.
Also, searches are stored at Community MX, so at any time you can click the link to show or hide the Most popular searches.
RSS Feeds
The Community MX site search now offers RSS feeds. This should be extremely useful for people with RSS readers. For example, if you are interested only in Flash Remoting articles, you can do a search for "flash remoting", set up your RSS reader with the search results RSS link, and every time a new article or blog entry comes out, your RSS reader will pick up the change in the RSS feed.
Users of the Firefox browser have RSS reading built in. When you visit the search page, check the lower right corner of the browser for an orange icon. Clicking the icon will give you a list of feeds for the page, which will be an overall CMX feed and a feed listing the current search results:
After adding the feed, the search results will be updated in your favorites menu.
Our RSS feed also handles categories and authors. For a full list of RSS feeds available from Community MX, check the opml page.
