Before posting a message, it is best to search the forum for the answer. This eliminates duplicate postings and will save you time.

Searching is fairly straightforward. Click on the Search button at the top of the Forum page and a search page is displayed. You enter your query criteria in the top text box, select Title, or Title and Text for the search, select an option for Age (note that selecting ---- searches all postings), then use the CTRL key with your mouse to select the forums you would like to search. The CTRL key is not required if you are searching only one forum.

To search for phrases, enclose them in single quotes like this: soca music'. Otherwise, you can use the AND/OR operators to search for multiple words within a posting.

You also have the option to just enter Author name instead of entering a value in the Query field.

This will help you find any postings made by a particular person. If you posted a message a while ago and want to quickly check for responses to it, then search using your name in the Author name field.

If matches are found you will see a listing of all postings containing your search criteria.

You can scroll down through the postings and click on the Show Thread button at the top of a posting to display all correspondence in the thread.

Note that the search screen provides two additional options that determine how the results are displayed.

Display: Max Messages Per Page sets the number of threads you would like displayed per page on the result screen, and Expand Messages determines whether or not the results will only display the subject of each posting or the text as well.

Displaying 10 messages per page and selecting "Expand Messages" is a good place to start.