Help:Searching

There is a search box on every page that allows you to quickly search for what you are looking for. Using the search box is easy: simply type in the keywords of your search query and then press the key, or click on the magnifying glass icon. If a page has the same title as the text you entered, you will be taken automatically to that page; otherwise, you will be taken to a search results page that lists all pages on the wiki that match your input.

Search box
By default on, the search box is located at the top-right of the page. It will have a magnifying glass icon.

If you are using a different skin (you can change the skin, or theme, of the page in your preferences), the search bar may appear in the sidebar to the left. The search box will have the "" and "" buttons instead of the magnifying glass icon. Clicking "" is functionally the same as clicking the magnifying glass in the default skin. Clicking "" will always take you to the search results page, even if the title of the page you entered exists.

When you type in the search box, a short list of search results will appear in a menu below the search box. You can click on these entries to go to the relevant page if those results have what you're looking for. At the bottom of the list of search results is a larger box that says '' followed by your search query; clicking on this box will take you to the search results page, even if the title of the page you entered exists.

Search results
If no page containing the exact search terms you entered exists on the wiki, or if you clicked on the '' box underneath the search box results, you will be directed to the search results page to get a longer list of pages that matched your query. You can also access this page by clicking on the magnifying glass or on '' without filling in the search box.

The search results page is divided up into two sections:


 * . This lists pages that have your search terms in their titles.
 * . This lists pages that have your search terms in their contents.

Search results will appear below. They will begin with the title of the page, along with a short preview of the page's contents underneath with matching search terms being bolded. Below that is the size of the page in both bytes and word count, and the time and date it was last edited.

At the bottom of the search results page are a series of links used to browse through the search results. Search result pages are limited to 20 results by default. If your search brought up more than 20 results, those will be displayed in additional pages. You can navigate to those pages by clicking on the "previous" and "next" buttons here. You can also choose to display 20, 50, 100, 250, or 500 results on each page at a time.

Advanced searching
On the search results page, there are four filters you can use to narrow your search to a particular namespace on the wiki.


 * . This will search all pages that contain content, such as the article namespace where all wiki articles are located. It will not provide behind-the-scenes technical pages relating to the wiki.
 * . This will limit search to files, such as images and videos.
 * Everything. This will search all namespaces on the wiki.
 * Advanced. This lets you pick and choose which namespace you want to search. By default, only the content namespaces are searched. If you check the checkbox next to '', the selection you make here will be remembered for future advanced searches you make.

How it works
There are some things to keep in mind when using the search box.


 * The article content is searched in its raw, wikitext form. In other words, it searches the text as it appears when you click '', not how it appears fully rendered. This means that content included on a page from a template will not be picked up.
 * The search functionality operates on whole words, separated by spaces or other punctuation. If your search term includes the word 'book', the results will include pages that have the word 'book' in them, but not 'books' or 'booklets'. If your search term includes the word 'inter', the results will not include pages that only have the word 'international', but may include pages with 'inter-national'.
 * The results will only include pages that contain all the words in your search. As such, the more search terms you enter, the fewer results you will see.
 * You can search for a specific phrase using double quotes (e.g. ). A phrase is considered to consist of whole words, so the phrase 'Prime Minister' won't be found by a search for "Prim Min", but will be found by a search for "Prime Minister".