Dear all,

we are really happy to announce that the new AdvancedSearch interface got deployed as a beta feature to all wikis just now. [1]

The search has great options to perform advanced queries e.g. by using keywords like "hastemplate" or "intitle", but often even experienced editors don't know about it - this is what we found out in a workshop series on advanced searches in 2016 and this is why we have built the AdvancedSearch extension. [2]

AdvancedSearch enhances Special:Search through an advanced parameters form. It serves as an interface for some of the search options that the Wikimedia Foundation's search team has been implemented over the past years. The way the interface works, users don't have to know the syntax behind each search field, but they can learn about it if they want to.

The feature already has been a beta feature on deWP, arWP, huWP, faWP and mediawiki.org for more than 5 months. During this "small beta phase" (= base version with a set of features, deployed to a few wikis, both ltr and rtl wikis) support for more search options got added (searches in categories and sub categories, searches for content in a specific language in wikis that have the translate extension enabled, searches for subpages of a page), the way how to select and configure namespaces got improved and several bugs were fixed.

Everyone is invited to test the now full beta feature!

If you want to give us feedback or if you find a bug, please use the main feedback page (or file a ticket in phabricator):

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help_talk:Extension:AdvancedSearch

If you want to learn more about the project, the functional scope of the AdvancedSearch extension and the usage, please see

* the help page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:AdvancedSearch

*the main project page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/AdvancedSearch

* the list of supported search options: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/AdvancedSearch/Functional_scope

Thanks, thanks, thanks :-)

A huge thanks to everyone who has tested the feature and gave feedback over the last 5 months and to everyone who has translated software messages and announcements - this is much appreciated! And a huge thanks to the WMF's search team who has done all the backend work and has built great options for advanced search queries that now can be accessed through the AdvancedSearch interface. It was and is great to work with you :-)

Looking forward to more testing and feedback to further improve the feature,

Thanks a lot,

Birgit
(for WMDE's Technical Wishes team)