Help:Searching


 * To search this wiki, go to Special:Search, or enter a term in the search box you see in the sidebar, or use the Inputbox below.

Wikia Search
Special:Search has been replaced with a new special page that searches the current wiki, and also gives you five results from other wikis hosted by Wikia.

See the manual for full details, and please report problems at User talk:Zwitter.

WikiaSearch preferences are not part of the main Special:Preferences page. In your preferences, you can set whether you want text matches and title matches to be separate, and how many results display per page. You must be logged in to change your preferences.

The first page of results will show 5 hits from this wiki, and 5 hits from other wikis. If more results on this wiki are available, you can click the More pages on this wiki » link to view 10 more (or up to 50 more if you change your WikiaSearch preferences).

The results from other wikis will only include pages in the main (article) namespace.

If no matches are found, an alternative spelling might be suggested.

A number of new MediaWiki namespace pages related to this feature can be changed, or translated at Special:Allmessages by the admins on your wiki. All of the new messages begin with wikiasearch. (list of new messages)

Adding a search box
To add a search box to any page, just type

It will produce this box:

See Help:Inputbox for more details.

No results message
There is a new message: MediaWiki:Wikiasearchnoresultsarticle which has the "no results" text when the user searches for something that could be a valid article. The default is
 *  You searched for: $1.\n\n:Sorry, there were no results for your search on this Wikicity. .

The $1 part of this will provide a red link to the word searched for, allowing you to create that article.

Disable "other wikis" search
You can disable the "other wikis" search for all users of your wiki by writing 1 in MediaWiki:Wikiasearchdefaultlocal on the relevant wiki.

Adding search boxes to your wiki
You can to add a search box on any page using the Inputbox feature.

Google search
The Google logo in the sidebar can be changed. There are two defaults available; one is suitable for dark backgrounds and one for light backgrounds. If you choose a dark background for your wiki, you can switch to the best Google logo by adding the word "dark" in MediaWiki:Skinshade. Alternatively, you can replace the Google logo by uploading a file called "Search_logo.png". By default, the Google search box displays radio buttons to search the web, Wikia, or an individual Wikia. To change this to search only Google, write the word basic at MediaWiki:Google-search. You can also choose to remove the searchbox altogether by adding a hyphen (-) at MediaWiki:Google-search.

Other ways to find pages
To browse pages on the wiki, you can view a list of all pages or browse by category. See Special:Log/upload to search for images.

You can use Google's "site search" for to search all Wikia.