From Test-Scratch-Wiki
The Scratch website has a custom Search Bar for easily navigating and exploring various projects, studios, users, and more. The search bar is located at the top of every page on the website.
Since Hour of Code 2013, the search engine was replaced by the Google Custom Search Engine due to increasing traffic. Despite the announcement that the traditional engine would be put back at the end of the event, this has not been revoked.
Note: | The rest of the article documents the traditional search engine Scratch used to have. |
Searching
To search for something, one must type a keyword or desired item in the search bar at the top. Hitting the 'enter' or 'return' key or clicking on the magnifying glass in the search bar will open up a separate webpage where the search results are rendered and displayed.
Categories
Search results are divided into categories for grouping similar results and organization. Categories make it easier to access the desired page one is looking for, as Scratch is diverse.
All
This category displays mixed results from all of the categories shown below, with the exclusion of forum topics. There are no filters for this category.
Projects
This is the default category when a search is submitted. It only displays Scratch project results related to the characters or terms that were searched. This category contains the following filters, the first being default:
- Most recent
- Most Relevant
- Most Loved
- Most Viewed
- Most Remixed
Studios
This category displays studios only as results of the specified search. It shows how many projects are in the studios as well as the comments. There are, however, no filters for studio searching.
Users
This category displays links to users' profiles. There are two filters for this category:
- Most projects
- Most followers
Support
This category displays links and descriptions to help pages on the Scratch website. The amount of results that display can be very limited.
Forums
This category does not display results but leads to the search engine page for the forums. This is a more advanced search engine with many filters, only relevant to the discussion pages. It can be accessed here.
Tips on Searching
Sometimes it can be difficult to find something one wants through the Search Bar. In those scenarios, here are some tips:
- Only use key words.
- Narrow your search down through what you know.
- Try several variations of the words in your search.
- You can try to use quotation marks around a phase so it will look for that exact phase.