The Z3 (E36/7) Message Board

Roadfly's search engine offers two modes: 'natural language' and 'boolean'. The easiest to use is 'natural language'. Just type in a rough description of what you are looking for, and we will try to find it. If you get too many results, try being more specific. If you get too few results, try being less specific. Remember that the search is performed not only on the bodies of posts but also on the author and subject fields. If you are looking for a post by a certain person and you know for sure what author name they used on the post, include it in your search to help narrow down your results.

The Order by: field can be very useful. By default, search results are returned in order of 'relevance'. That means that the first result will be the one that the Roadfly search engine thinks is most relevant to the query you typed. But, sometimes you know that you are looking for a post either very recent or very old. In such cases, you can change the default result ordering to sort by date, either ascending or descending.

The boolean search on Roadfly requires a little bit of an explanation. You decide words or phrases that you want to be included in or excluded from your search. Precede them with a + to include them or a – to exclude them. Enclose phrases in double quotes. For example, to search for posts that definitely mentioned a supercharger but not a turbo, you would set the match type to 'boolean' and search for

+supercharger –turbo

To search for all posts containing the exact phrase "acme widget" and "failure" but excluding "oil", you sould type

+"acme widget" +failure –oil

Both the boolean match mode and the result sort order can be very useful tools to help you find what you want. Roadfly has millions of posts in its archives, so odds are that many posts match generic search terms. Use more specific terms along with the advanced features outlined above to help you find what you need.

Questions, comments, or problems, please visit the Roadfly help desk.