The Stovebolt Site Forums The Back Office IT Short Bus HOW TO: Search the Stovebolt site

At Stovebolt, we have a search function that is designed to return results for the Stovebolt site only. It searches ALL Stovebolt pages including Tech Tips, Events, Gallery, Features, and the Forum posts. You can find the search function in the left-hand column (magnifying glass) - the image and the link shown here on left.

Or if you don't have access to the left column in the Forums, you can use the Search link in the menu bar at the top right hand portion of your screen.


Or go to it directly here: Stovebolt Search (same spot ) .

Now, if you are wanting the search just the forums, below are step-by-step instructions for how to get the most of your search. Rustoholic's post below spelled it all out.

Searching the Forums (only)

• Click (or select) the magnifying glass search icon in the upper right corner of each page.
• Do a 'simple' search by putting your search criteria in the little window that pops up and hitting Enter.
• To access the Advanced Forum Search window, select the Advanced Forum Search link/phrase in the little popup window, as shown in the first image below.

The rest of this post describes how to use the Advanced Forum Search.

Advance Forum Search

• Select the Forum or Forums that you want to search from the list on the left.
  
  - The default is to search all forums (All Forums is highlighted, as shown in the second image below).
  - Selecting one forum will search in just that forum.
  - Selecting a category will search all the forums within that category (for example The Shop Area -----)
  - Selecting multiple forums will search only within those selected forums. To select more than one forum, hold the ctrl key down when you click (select) the additional forums after selecting the first forum to be searched. See the third image below for an example of selecting two forums to search.
  
  
• To the right of "Forum(s) to search" enter your search criteria (a keyword or keywords) into the "Keywords Search Terms" field.
  
  - Entering a single keyword will search for all instances of that word.
  - Entering 2 or more words will search for EACH word, as if there were an OR operator between the keywords. So entering motor mount will search for posts containing motor OR mount.
  - Entering 2 or more words WITH PLUS SIGNS will search as if there is an AND operator between the keywords. So entering +motor +mount will search for posts that contain motor AND mount but they do NOT have to be adjacent to one another in the text string.
  - Entering 2 or more words IN QUOTATION MARKS will search for the exact phrase as entered. Entering "motor mount" will search for posts that contain the PHRASE motor mount and will not return any results, or posts, that contains only one of the words.
  - Entering 2 or more words with A MINUS sign will exclude words from the search. For example, entering +motor -mount will search for posts which have the word motor in them and DO NOT have the word mount.
  
  You can mix and match search operators. For example, entering "motor mount" -235 would return posts containing the PHRASE motor mount and NOT containing the term 235.
  
  - Entering "motor mount" +216 -235 would return posts containing the PHRASE motor mount AND containing the term 216 but NOT containing the term 235, as shown in the fourth image below.
  
  
• Below the Keyword Search Terms box you can choose whether you want to search just the subject or the subject AND the body of the posts.
  
  
• In the "By Display Name" section, you can enter a username as a search criteria. This can be done with or without keywords, so entering +mig +welding in the keywords field and the username of MPandC would return posts containing the term mig AND the term welding posted by the user MPandC. See the fifth image below as an example of doing this search.
  Leaving the keyword field blank and just entering the Username in this section will return all the posts made by that particular Username.
  
  
• Next select a date range. You can search for posts newer or older than a certain criteria (15 years being the maximum). Narrowing down the search time will increase the speed of the results, although the search is very fast in either case.
  
  
• You can choose how many results per page you wish to view. The default is 25.
  
  
• If you like, you can choose to view a preview of the post’s body section. If selected, this option will result in the display of the first 50 words or so from the body of each post. An example of search results that show the previews is the last image below.
  
  
• When you are finished defining your search criteria click the "Submit" button. Note that searching for words with less than 4 characters will return unpredictable results. Also, the search engine omits certain common words like the, be, is, or etcetera.
  

Happy searching!
Dean

Thanks Dean for doing this and for helping with the update of the Search webpage. We've link the "forums" portion back to this thread. And included a better explanation for searching the entire site.

Hope this is helpful. It has been to me.

I updated Paul's original post which was done in 2021 and adjusted the Title.

An original HOW TO ...

We have seen that this page is getting views on a regular basis. That's great to know. Thought perhaps it'd be a good idea for some of the new Bolters to read this in order to help them find stuff on Stovebolt.

Just a nod here to using the advanced search function. Recently I pulled the distributor from my 235 and had some questions. I researched the Tech Tips but was unable to find just what I needed. Using the Advanced Search function for the "Engine Shop" I was able to locate the answer. While I do have a FAM it just didn't go in depth enough.

"What was the question" you ask? I had the distributor out while cleaning and painting the engine, when putting back in I noticed it had 2 ring grooves on the body. "Was there supposed to be an 0ring there"? I found the answer "No", and it actually came with a good explanation. Of course it was HRL (Jerry) who had the answer. The upper groove is there to keep engine oil from migrating up the distributor body. Adding an O-ring there would stop the vacuum advance from moving. QUESTION ANSWERED!

The BOLT to the rescue again....

Craig, another hint would be to use plus and minus signs in your search query, or a phrase in quotes.
A plus sign preceding a word tells the search that the word must be included, and a minus sign that the word is excluded.

Example +distributor +grooves yielded 9 results, with your answer in the thread on the first hit.
Without the + signs: distributor grooves (no quotes) yielded 40 pages! with a bunch of other unrelated stuff. I got to page 6 without finding the top result on the first search.
In this particular case "distributor grooves" got no results.

[on edit] For those following along in this thread, Rustoholic has put together a comprehensive post on how to use the Advanced Search HERE. It's in a sticky thread in the IT Short Bus forum.

Edit more (by Peggy): so we moved it to go along with Dean's post to give a little testimonial of sorts.

I've noticed that Google doesn't populate stovebolt.Com results anymore when searching for info. It does bring up other websites, vcca, 67-72 etc.. Is this something that has been done from stovebolts end?

Can you give us an example? What was your search criteria?

Not completely. But, if you use site:stovebolt.com (which is what our search function does) you will get exclusively stovebolt results.

It doesn't populate results from the forum in search results. For example, site:www.Stovebolts.com 1939 GMC Bed. I might search for that if I'm doing some research on the metal bed that came on my 39 GMC. I've attached a photo for reference as to what comes up for that search. In the past, the forum would populate like the second photo of jalopy journal. I'm bringing this up because it's much harder to find specific information within the forum now. I've found the stovebolt sites search function to be difficult to narrow down search results.

Make sure you use stovebolt.com, not stovebolts.com in your query.

Google search does give you different results if you use "site:stovebolt.com 1939 GMC Bed" vs "stovebolt.com 1939 GMC Bed". It also appears that the search engine results on a phone may be different from the results on a desktop computer.

There is nothing that our server can do about the search engines. BTW, I prefer DuckDuckGo.com for searching the web.

Daniel, It looks like you are trying to use Google directly on your phone. As Paul (baldeagle) mentioned above, you will get much better Stovebolt results, including individual forum thread/post results related to your search if you use THIS Search Page. Below is a snapshot of what the beginning of my search results where just using "1939 GMC Bed" through that search page. You don't even have to be signed in to Stovebolt to use that search page, but to see pictures and other attachments associated with the publicly viewable posts, you do have to be signed in.

If you don't get a lot of results on your first try, reword your search and add more details and you will have an easier time getting the best available results.

Gord, in his screenshot he used stovebolt.com. He probably just mistyped the name in his post. But, it does not appear that phone results are completely different than on my laptop.(See the screenshots below with captions.)