How To: Link to AN Search Results

[Woolies]

When you are looking at the results of a search you've just done the url in the address bar will have a "searchid" part to it - these are only valid for about half an hour, so how do you link other users to the results?

It's not as easy as cut & paste but here's a beginners guide:

Start with this: http://www.altnation.com/forums/search.php?do=process

After that you need to give something to search for, this is done by adding bits onto the end of the url link address such as:

• Search for a word: &query=keyword
• Search by user: &searchuser=username
• A particular forum: &forumchoice=forumid

The parts in italics (after the = sign) are what you change to customise your search.


There are other things you can add to change the results, such as:

• Show results as posts rather than threads: &showposts=1
• Change the order of results: &order={descending OR ascending}
• Search in the last X days: &searchdate=number-of-days

So to link to the results of a search showing all posts made by Woolies containing the word qwerty the link would be:

http://www.altnation.com/forums/sear...es&showposts=1



For Gallery Searches:

Base URL is

http://www.altnation.com/gallery/sea...results&fields[]=images

search by username add: &username=<username>
in a specific category add: &catids[]=<category-id>

[Mrs.Evil of Hesselink]

See while you're on the subject of searching can I point out that when you click on "Replies" beside the name of the thread it brings up a box of who has posted in the thread and how many times they have posted. But when you click on the number to bring up the posts by a particular user you only get the first 40 (or however many posts you have set to see on each page).

It's upsetting for stalkers like myself.

[Woolies]

Originally Posted by Mrs.Evil

when you click on the number to bring up the posts by a particular user you only get the first 40

aye - that's a rookie hackers mistake,
almost everybody forgets to carry across stuff like that to the other pages first time they use the standard page navigation I think & I've definitely done it myself for something

You can fake it if you understand fixing the query string in urls, other than that fingers crossed for next version of the forum software, it's too fiddly and intrusive for a quick fix

[Mrs.Evil of Hesselink]

Originally Posted by Woolies

you can fake it if you understand fixing the query string in urls

Is it easy?

I'm quite dim.

[Woolies]

Just add &page= with a page number (2,3,4,etc) to the url in the address bar

[Mrs.Evil of Hesselink]

Originally Posted by Woolies

Just add &page= with a page number (2,3,4,etc) to the url in the address bar

Cheers!