# Cannot Find A Thread ? Try "Search By Tag."



## spnadmin (Jan 20, 2013)

Cannot Find A Thread ? Try "Search by Tag."

Search by Tag is a way to find threads by aiming a simple "tag" search at a target.

There are times when forum members report that they cannot find a thread from using the SPN "Search" tab. This has even happened to me. The problem comes about when you or I  search for a topic using one or two words. Either the search will return an answer "No results," or the result will be dozens of pages and too many threads to look through one at a time. This happened to me recently when I was searching for "Nanakshai Calendar." 

*Try "Search by Tag" instead.* You can see what I am talking about at the bottom of the second pic attachment. You fill in your own search term.

Tags are words or short phrases that appear in thread titles and the first paragraph of a comment or a posted article. SPN forum software automatically does something called "parsing." Words and phrases are "tagged" and then stored to enable a search on a topic. Some of these "tags" become part of a "tag cloud" or a collection of links to threads containing the topic. You can see the SPN tag cloud whenever you click on the Search button and then click on Tag Search.

A good idea is to expand a tag search by using "Search by Tag." That has been very reliable.

You start by clicking on the "Search" button (center right in the orange navigation bar below the top  banner). Choose "Tag Search" in the pop-up menu.. Instead of using one of the links in the Tag Cloud, look just below the Cloud. You will see the words "Search by Tag," and beside it a comment pane. Next type your topic or search term in the comment pane. When I search this way, the number of threads that result will be many fewer, and they will be only the threads that were related exactly to what I was looking for.

If you try this approach, and still have trouble, alert us to the problem and we can try to be of help. If you are successful let us know about that too


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