HUKD help: Searching on HotUKDeals - Helpful Hints and Tips

Searching

Firstly, I find using single words is a very effective way of searching. For example, if you are looking for Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs, a simple search for the most important keyword will suffice, E.g. “Buffy”. If you wish to use multiple keywords to narrow down your search, our forums use the plus and minus symbols to do so (this is called Boolean for those who may be interested!!). For example, if I want to do a search for Ipod Nanos, the appropriate search term would be “+ipod +nano”, being careful to leave a space between the two words. Simple!! I’ll give you another example, if I want to look for Dell laptops, I would use the phrase, “+dell +laptop”

Alternatively, you can use the negative option, for example, “+ipod –nano”. You can try these searches out for yourself, and see the different results that you get.

Note: there is a 3 letter search minimum on the forums, so you should be able to seach for Wii, PS3 etc, but you cannot search for 2 letters or less.

VOUCHERS: BEFORE you post your voucher, be sure to pop the code into the "quicksearch" box at the top right to see if it has already been posted.


Quicksearch



Secondly, the quicksearch box is situated at the top right of the forums. It can be a handy feature if you need to find something fast. Simply type what you want in there and click “search”, following the guidelines I have given above.


Advanced search

The advanced search is by far the most effective way of finding what you want. You can see a number of fields, but I find it is best to leave most of these at their default settings, just changing a few to help you narrow down your searches.



The first field, "search by keyword", works on the same principles explained above. Note that you can select to search in thread titles only, or in the entire posts.

Secondly, you can narrow down the results according to merchant as well. This can be a very handy feature. To utilise this, type the first few letters of the merchant you are interested in, and you should see a blue drop down box appear below the field, like this:



If you see the red circle, just be patient while the list loads. Then all you have to do is click the merchant name to select it. Sometimes if a merchant has 2 parts to their name, such as Empire Direct, you can type in one of the other words, and the merchant name should still appear…. Such as typing in “direct” in this example.

You can narrow your search down by the user who posted. For example, if you’re having trouble finding a thread, but you know the name of the user who started it, you can search using this method as well. It can be handy, in that you can search for both basic posts by that user, or actual threads started by that user.



All the fields below this should be quite self-explanatory.

Tip: Sometimes when I am searching for an old thread but I do not know the specific date, I set the “find posts from” to “yesterday”, and “older”, otherwise, the search does not go back any further than 6 months.

Then you can narrow your search down by forums or category. Again, fairly self-explanatory there, but a really useful thing to use. For example, if I know that a post I am searching for was in the freebies forum, I would just narrow my search results to that. If you try the narrowing by category, this may not give the results you hope for, as people choose different categories for the same thing. E.g. One person might put a PC game into “computers” whereas another might see it as “entertainment”.

Finally, when you are ready to go, just click the “search now” button . Remember: the output will be displayed according to your selection at the top, regarding the “full details/text only”, “include/exclude expired” and the “show online deals only”.

TIP: the ctrl+F keys on your keyboard are a useful tool too. For example, if I want to find SD cards, I would do a thread title search for the word “card” as “SD” only has 2 letters, and would not work. Then when the results appear, I hit Ctrl+F on my keyboard, and quickly skim down all the instances of “SD” on the results pages. You can get through a few pages in a pretty fast time.


Let’s put all these advanced search functions together with an example. Say I know that Rayman posted a thread about a 19” monitor, and I’m having trouble finding it. Using the advanced search function, I type monitor in the search box, select Search titles only, select Rayman as the username, select Find threads by user, select the deals forum only and click search. Try it out and see what you find!! There are quite a few hits for that!




Merchant & voucher filter



These little boxes can be incredibly handy for locating things you want on the forums. For example, say you vaguely recalled that there was a great deal on a 32” LCD TV @ Dixons, but were having trouble finding it, as there are so many TVs posted on the forums. I’ll continue with this example on down a bit.

Before you begin searching in this fashion, you must understand that your results will depend on a few things. For example, the topics and forums along the top, or the “include expired”, “online deals only” buttons.



From here on in, if I refer to something in this fashion (all/all/new), it means I am referring from the top down, firstly the topic chosen, the forum you are in, then the hot/new/discussed tab. For example, I may be in (Groceries/vouchers/new). Hope that’s understandable!

Merchant filter

Whichever combination of these that you are in, if you use the merchant or voucher filter, it will only show you results from that. For example, if I want to find the latest deals from Dell, I go to (all/all/new) and use the merchant filter to select Dell or Dell Outlet.

To do this, you simply type the first few letters of the merchant you are interested in, and you should see a blue drop down box appear below the field, like this:



Then all you have to do is click the merchant name to select it.

After you filter some deals for a particular merchant, you must remember that the “view options” will also be affecting your results. If you have text only or full details turned on, you’ll see the results in that format. A few people have been having trouble finding things lately, and I think these options may be part of the issue – if you are looking for a deal and it has been expired, you are only going to see it in your results if “include expired” is activated. Anyway, once you have filtered your merchant, you can change your view options to your heart’s content.


Voucher filter

The find a voucher box is very handy, in that you don’t have to go to (all/vouchers/new) to select the merchant, you just type a bit of the merchant name in the “find a voucher” box, click it, and away you go. For example:



After you filter some deals for a particular merchant, the same applies, in that the “view options” will affect your results.


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So folks, that's all! Hope that helps some of you out If you have any more tips, feel free to post below Or if you're having trouble finding something in particular, post up your problem and we'll see if we can help.

Could I recommend the use of tags to make things EVEN easier to find... A while ago I was looking for ps2 games and as there are only 3 characters in ps2 my searches were less than accurate.

I was advised to use *ps2* and to an extent it did narrow dow the results. However, I'm now on the lookout for a LCD TV... The ** system works to the same extent as it did before but if all LCD TV's and PS2 games were tagged the whole process would be a mile better... Or am I just being picky?!?

Come on peop;e... TAG your deals!

Cheers all!

I think admin said the ** system is not in use any more, but 3 letter searches now are.

Thanks for the feedback... Now I wish there were 3 letters in "TV"

Have you any idea how many things have LCD involved?!?

This may be completely unrealistic but if the word filter changed 'TV' to 'T-V' whenever it was typed into the forum, it would be 3 characters so I wonder if that would work.

... Oh but OP, you could filter out most other entries for LCD by using a minus sign.

Yeah, but if you're smart, you can really narrow things down. If you want a monitor deal for example, I would go to advanced search, type "+LCD +monitor" as the keywords, search thread titles onty, and select the "deals" forum only.

EDIT - or if you didn't want monitors, and you only wanted TVS, then a search for +LCD -monitor

Great guide Emma, but I notice you haven't mentioned the use of Quote Marks in the search.

Just like Google, you can search for a 'phrase' by putting Quote Marks around the words. e.g. "Computer Game" will find anything with the phrase 'computer game' in it. The advantages of this is that it can narrow your search down even better than using +computer +game would. Also, unlike the normal searches, you can include words in your search that contain only 1 or 2 characters. e.g. "LCD TV", "PC Game", etc.

However, please note, unlike Google it searches for the exact phrase you are looking for and nothing more. So if you put "PC Game", it won't include in the results posts that only contain the phrase "PC Games".

I wasn't aware that it used the quote mark system... I'll check that out and add it in

There seem to be several "help threads" now, which is obviously a good thing, but somewhat wasted effort since you will need to search the site to find these useful titbits.

Would it not be more useful to have these help sheets as a permanent link from either the side bar or in the "topics" list?

Yes I know the mods have links in their sigs, but in all honesty how many new members would know who a mod is, let alone search for one to find info that may be in the sig?

Its not exactly rocket science to do this, plus more relevant as you dont use "stickies" to keep them in full view all the time.

Just a thought.

Been bought up many times Guv.

I think Admin's on the case last time he posted on the subject.

Hopefully it won't be too much longer, eh ?

Yes, hopefully!

Seems little point in asking for constructive criticism, particularly for something as simple to do and needed as this definately is. There has been some good input for help guides. Why not show it off rather than hope it gets a bump at some time to get onto the first page of one of the many forum listings!