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Tommy's Tips: Volume 1

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 7:11 am
by WelchTC
While I was working at Linspire, Inc., serving as the CTO, I came up with a monthly article called "Tommy's Tips". The purpose of this article was to teach people some of the lesser-known features of the Linspire operating system. I thought that I would start the same tradition here.
Tip 1: New Posts

The forums are getting very busy and it is harder to keep up with all of the threads that have new posts. However, there is an easy way for you to see every post that has not been read. Once you have logged in to the forums, simply click on the "New Posts" link inside of the navigation bar towards the top of the screen. This link will show you all posts that you have not read. This is how I get through reading each and every post on the forums.
Tip 2: Tech Home Page

I know that many people may not go to the main technology home page very often. In fact, some of you may have a bookmark to the forum site. However, we are constantly updating the main page with news, technical information, blogs from managers at the Church, and, of course, my blog. There is a lot of good information that you won't want to miss.
Tip 3: Searching the Forums

There is a wealth of information in the forums, but getting the information out of the forums may be difficult. When searching, don't forget that you can use wildcards and you can use words like "and" and "or" to filter the results. For example, if you want to search for all posts that have the word "scriptures" and the word "study,", enter "scriptures and study" in the search field. If you want to find all posts with the words "scriptures" or "study" (either one), enter "scriptures or study". You can mix wildcards in your searching as well. Try searching for "mission* and ward" and you will find all posts that have any word beginning with "mission" and the word "ward" in the post. Searching is not case sensitive.
Tip 4: RSS Feeds

We have a couple of different RSS feed options for you on the site. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of all new entries posted on the home page. Also, you can subscribe to an RSS feed of all new threads or of specific threads. To subscribe to various RSS feeds within the forum, you have a choice of two formats: RSS 0.91 and RSS 2.0. The differences are as follows: These URLs provide an RSS feed of all new threads in all publicly viewable forums. If you want to specify particular forums, simply add "forumids" to the URL as follows:

http://beta.tech.lds.org/forum/external.php?type=rss2&forumids=12,3,18

This example would get all new threads in forums with the ID of 12, 3, and 18. To determine the forum ID, simply hover over a specific forum on the main forum page and look at the end of the URL line. It will have a "f=###" where "###" is the forum ID.


Tom Welch
Technology Community Manager

Minimum length

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 8:54 am
by mkmurray
tomw wrote:
Tip 3: Searching the Forums

There is a wealth of information in the forums, but getting the information out of the forums may be difficult. When searching, don't forget that you can use wildcards and you can use words like "and" and "or" to filter the results. For example, if you want to search for all posts that have the word "scriptures" and the word "study,", enter "scriptures and study" in the search field. If you want to find all posts with the words "scriptures" or "study" (either one), enter "scriptures or study". You can mix wildcards in your searching as well. Try searching for "mission* and ward" and you will find all posts that have any word beginning with "mission" and the word "ward" in the post. Searching is not case sensitive.
There is also some minimum character length of each search word, correct?

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 10:22 am
by WelchTC
mkmurray wrote:There is also some minimum character length of each search word, correct?
Yes, currently it is set to 4 characters although with all of the acronyms at the Church, I'm thinking of moving it to 3. It does have DB ramifications doing that.

Tom

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 11:55 am
by bhofmann
Yes, these have been very helpful. The other day I was trying to find the RSS links for the forums and these tips gave me more than I found.

It took me a couple weeks to notice the New Posts link and wish I had your tips earlier.

I have one suggestion to add to the search tip. Not too long ago I was trying to search the forum for something specific and kept using the search box at the top of the header. It took me a bit to find the search box in the forum navigation. It might save people a few minutes if you explain that there are two types of searches on the LDS Tech site.

These tips are great! Keep them coming.

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 12:42 pm
by WelchTC
bhofmann wrote:I have one suggestion to add to the search tip. Not too long ago I was trying to search the forum for something specific and kept using the search box at the top of the header. It took me a bit to find the search box in the form navigation. It might save people a few minutes if you explain that there are two types of searches on the LDS Tech site.

Great tip!

Tom