XenForo uses something called criteria. Criteria help decide when to show things or hide them. They also make searching work better. You might use criteria when you look for users through the control panel. You can also use criteria to control when special notices appear on your website. When you search using text, the system finds anything that matches what you typed. For example, if you type "jo" when searching for usernames, you would find people named Jo, John, Joanne, Bjorn, and Marjory. The system looks for those letters anywhere inside the name and shows you everyone who matches.
Numbers work a little differently. The system lets you search between two numbers. You can set a small number and a big number. Then it finds everything between those numbers. If you want to find users who wrote at least one message, you can put "1" in the first box and "-1" in the second box. The "-1" means there is no limit on how many messages they could have written. Empty boxes or boxes with the normal starting value do not count for searches. The system skips those boxes when looking for results.
User criteria look at facts about your members. These facts include which group they belong to or what their username says. Many criteria come in pairs like "User has something" and "User does not have something." The system uses these criteria in many places, like when you search for users, look at member statistics, set up notices, or contact many users at once. Some criteria check custom fields you created yourself. The system knows what type of field you made and gives you the right options. Text fields let you search for words. Multiple-choice fields let you pick from the choices you created.
Page criteria check things about where users visit your site from. These criteria know the current time and date. They can tell which part of your site someone has browsed. They even know if someone found your site through a search engine like Google. All these criteria types help you control who sees what on your website. You can make special notices that only show up for certain people. You can find specific users based on many different facts about them. The system gives you many ways to sort and filter information. This makes running your XenForo website much easier because you can find exactly what you need.
Numbers work a little differently. The system lets you search between two numbers. You can set a small number and a big number. Then it finds everything between those numbers. If you want to find users who wrote at least one message, you can put "1" in the first box and "-1" in the second box. The "-1" means there is no limit on how many messages they could have written. Empty boxes or boxes with the normal starting value do not count for searches. The system skips those boxes when looking for results.
User criteria look at facts about your members. These facts include which group they belong to or what their username says. Many criteria come in pairs like "User has something" and "User does not have something." The system uses these criteria in many places, like when you search for users, look at member statistics, set up notices, or contact many users at once. Some criteria check custom fields you created yourself. The system knows what type of field you made and gives you the right options. Text fields let you search for words. Multiple-choice fields let you pick from the choices you created.
Page criteria check things about where users visit your site from. These criteria know the current time and date. They can tell which part of your site someone has browsed. They even know if someone found your site through a search engine like Google. All these criteria types help you control who sees what on your website. You can make special notices that only show up for certain people. You can find specific users based on many different facts about them. The system gives you many ways to sort and filter information. This makes running your XenForo website much easier because you can find exactly what you need.
