Search Guide

This guide will provide information on how to search PlanetPhillip.

The search bar is located at the top of almost every page on the site.

To search for something you just need to click your cursor in the search bar and type your search term, then press return/enter. The results will be displayed on the same page.

If it’s that easy to use why do you need a guide? Well, sometimes you don’t get the results you expect and there is nothing I can do to improve the search because it is a basic function of the SQL database I use to run the site. I can, however, offer some tips.

Searching for common words used in a map or mod’s description probably won’t prove very useful. Words like Combine probably appear in 90% of Half-Life 2 maps or mods, the same for Zombies. In these case I highly recommend using the Tags feature as this is exactly what it is designed for.

Firstly, the length of your search term is important. Anything less than 4 letters won’t provide valid results.

A number of common words is silently ignored. This is to increase performance and to improve the quality of the search results. Words like of and and etc.

Secondly, if you are searching for a map or mod for a particular game then adding the game name in the search is the worse thing you can do because it will give too many results.

If you are looking for a map or mod for a particular game just click the game’s title in the Category section of the footer and that will list the maps and mods for that game. You could then use your web browsers search function (Normally Ctrl + F) to search within that page. (There is another option which I will discuss later)

Simply type in the author’s name. However, if they have a nickname it is often better to use that because it’s normally one unique word. Let’s hope they used the same name throughout their mapping career!

I am planning to introduce a new page that lists Half-Life 2 map and mod authors, with links to all their work listed on the site and a link back to their home page.

This is a little difficult because the dates they appear on the site bear no relation to when they were actually released. You could try entering: +month +year and replace the month and year of your choice. If you are 100% certain of the exact date you could try searching for that.

This is very easy, All you need to do is enter: http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/2007/07/ in the address bar of your browser and replace the month and year of your choice. This archive can also be found via the Dated Archives page.

There is a number of operators which allow to fine-tune your search.

+ A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in each article that is returned.
- A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any of the articles that are returned.
* The asterisk serves as the truncation (or wildcard) operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.
“” A phrase that is enclosed within double quote characters matches only articles that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed.

Please Note: There are other search operators but for the purposes of searching the site I do not feel they are important enough. If you want a detailed list of operators please visit the The SQL Manual.

These examples are taken from the SQL website and I will try and replace them with real world examples as soon as possible.

• apple banana
  Find articles that contain at least one of the two words.
• +apple +juice
  Find articles that contain both words.
• +apple tree
  Find articles that contain the word apple, but rank articles higher if they also contain tree.
• +apple -tree
  Find articles that contain the word apple but not tree.
• apple*
  Find articles that contain words such as apple, apples, applesauce, or applet.
• "sweet apple"
  Find articles that contain the exact phrase sweet apple (for example, articles that contain my sweet apple but not my sweet and tasty apple).

I mentioned earlier that there was another method for search for something within only one game and that is the Advanced Search page. This page allows you to have more control over which categories are search and other options.

It also allow you to search through comments, which the normal search doesn’t.

At the moment I am focusing on other aspects of the site but I may try to include a Google search on the site as well.

I hope the above guide has proved useful and if you have any interesting experiences searching for something on the site please use the comments system below to tell me. If it helps other PP readers then I can add it to the guide.

If you have any suggestions, questions, ideas or complaints regarding anything to do with the site you can contact me via the Contact Me page. I respond to all messages as soon as possible.

This page was last updated on Saturday 12 April 2008.