Greetings 
From time to time I see folks having trouble figuring things out on these forums. Occasionally, I will make posts trying to help, but that only assists a small number of members. I want to make sure this information is available to anyone that could find it useful, so I'm going to start posting little howto posts on whatever topic I feel there is a need for, or maybe I just thought it was useful or clever.
For my first effort, I am going to describe a methodology that can dramatically increase your efficiency when reading through completed grow journals.
We've all been there. You are reading someone's journal, and realize they have prior journals you want to look at. We go to the journal, and it's 50 pages! Who has that kind of time? I'd love to read through ALL the journals. I would learn so much, but I have a wife, a 50+ hour job, dogs, and oh ya, all those plants to tend too!
So let's see if we can figure out a way to do this more quickly. What's our goal when reading a journal? To learn from the grower as we watch them work through various issues or problems. The reality is, most journals are mostly posts from other members encouraging the grower. There is nothing at all wrong with these posts. In fact, it's exactly these posts that make this forum such a great community. So much love flowing around here.
Lucky for us, there is a way to help sift through all the 'chatter', and that's what I'm going to attempt to explain today. We're going to be making use of the "Advanced Search" functionality. Don't be intimidated. I'm going to walk you through each step with screenshots!
OK, let's get started...
Let's say I stumble upon this Hiker guy and decide I want to read his journal. Oh no! It's 44 pages!
Luckily, the forums have a way to search threads. First, click the link in the upper blue box. Then click the link in the lower blue box. This will allow us to search only this thread.
Here is the advanced search page. It's not obvious, but if you followed the step above, you are now searching ONLY that thread. I want to find all the posts made by Hiker that include a picture, so I search for the tag and then filter by user name. You probably want to make sure the "exact name" box is checked in most cases. To make sure you spell their name correctly, just start typing it and a list of names will popup underneath the box. Click the name you're looking for, and it will fill in the box.
[img]https://www.420magazine.com/gallery/data/500/3_-_Advanced_Search.jpg
After you hit Submit, you get this page. Each one of the links with the thread name in it go directly to a specific post. Here is where my biggest tip comes in. You should always start this in a new browser window, ie only one tab open. Then you open up those links in new tabs by right-clicking and choosing 'open in new tab'. My mouse allows me to do this even easier by clicking with the middle mouse button. You may be able to do the same. In this picture you can see that I've opened the first two search results into their own tabs.
Now you just work your way through the search results. Just keep that first search tab open and keep closing the others. You can also leave out the keyword if you want ALL their posts. It's actually a pretty simple process, and it WILL save you some time once you get the hang of it.
So that's it for this first installment of Hiker's Howtos. I hope someone finds this useful. I welcome any feedback, good or bad! If there is something specific you want to know about, I'm also open for ideas. Thanks for reading.
:Namaste:
From time to time I see folks having trouble figuring things out on these forums. Occasionally, I will make posts trying to help, but that only assists a small number of members. I want to make sure this information is available to anyone that could find it useful, so I'm going to start posting little howto posts on whatever topic I feel there is a need for, or maybe I just thought it was useful or clever.
For my first effort, I am going to describe a methodology that can dramatically increase your efficiency when reading through completed grow journals.
We've all been there. You are reading someone's journal, and realize they have prior journals you want to look at. We go to the journal, and it's 50 pages! Who has that kind of time? I'd love to read through ALL the journals. I would learn so much, but I have a wife, a 50+ hour job, dogs, and oh ya, all those plants to tend too!
So let's see if we can figure out a way to do this more quickly. What's our goal when reading a journal? To learn from the grower as we watch them work through various issues or problems. The reality is, most journals are mostly posts from other members encouraging the grower. There is nothing at all wrong with these posts. In fact, it's exactly these posts that make this forum such a great community. So much love flowing around here.
Lucky for us, there is a way to help sift through all the 'chatter', and that's what I'm going to attempt to explain today. We're going to be making use of the "Advanced Search" functionality. Don't be intimidated. I'm going to walk you through each step with screenshots!
OK, let's get started...
Let's say I stumble upon this Hiker guy and decide I want to read his journal. Oh no! It's 44 pages!
Luckily, the forums have a way to search threads. First, click the link in the upper blue box. Then click the link in the lower blue box. This will allow us to search only this thread.
Here is the advanced search page. It's not obvious, but if you followed the step above, you are now searching ONLY that thread. I want to find all the posts made by Hiker that include a picture, so I search for the tag and then filter by user name. You probably want to make sure the "exact name" box is checked in most cases. To make sure you spell their name correctly, just start typing it and a list of names will popup underneath the box. Click the name you're looking for, and it will fill in the box.
[img]https://www.420magazine.com/gallery/data/500/3_-_Advanced_Search.jpg
After you hit Submit, you get this page. Each one of the links with the thread name in it go directly to a specific post. Here is where my biggest tip comes in. You should always start this in a new browser window, ie only one tab open. Then you open up those links in new tabs by right-clicking and choosing 'open in new tab'. My mouse allows me to do this even easier by clicking with the middle mouse button. You may be able to do the same. In this picture you can see that I've opened the first two search results into their own tabs.
Now you just work your way through the search results. Just keep that first search tab open and keep closing the others. You can also leave out the keyword if you want ALL their posts. It's actually a pretty simple process, and it WILL save you some time once you get the hang of it.
So that's it for this first installment of Hiker's Howtos. I hope someone finds this useful. I welcome any feedback, good or bad! If there is something specific you want to know about, I'm also open for ideas. Thanks for reading.
:Namaste:
CA215
