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Freshman Year: Basic Navigation
INTRODUCTION
This class will teach you how to find your way around the IMDb.
QUESTIONS ANSWERED
- I've found the person/movie, but where's all the other info about them?
- What/where are the various features on your site (like your list of all the Oscar nominees since the Oscars began)?
NAVIGATING THE IMDb
When you're browsing around the IMDb, there are four aids (besides the searches) to help you find the information you're looking for. We believe it's pretty easy to remember these four pieces of advice...
- Look up
- Look down
- Look left
- When all else fails, look in the index
LESSON 1: LOOK UP / LOOK DOWN
The two navigational aids you'll find on every page on our site are the tabs on the top of the page and the text links at the bottom of the page.
The tabs at the top of the page look like this...
The tabs represent what we think are the most important sections of the site...
- We've got a golden ticket: The rectangular shape with "IMDb" and a little circle containing a house leads back to the front/home page of the IMDb.
- Personalize: This is a link for registered users to access the personalization features of our web site. If you're not a registered user, you'll be invited to become one. If you're wondering about the advantages of registering, check out our "Why Should I Register?" page.
- What's Hot: This page gives you quick access to a number of features on our site and the site of our parent company Amazon.com. You'll find out quickly about the most popular movies, soundtracks, entertainment books, videos and DVDs, based on sales data and a little editorial judgement. From there you can move on to more detailed information in any category that interests you.
- Movie/TV News: Currently this leads to Lew Irwin's "Studio Briefing Column" but we're working to bring you more sources of news related to movies, television, and your favorite celebrities. As we build out this section, the tab will lead to a page with top headlines from our various news feeds.
- Fun Features: A quick guide to some of the features and searches at the IMDb that we think are particularly fun.
- Games & Contests: Fairly self explanatory... our section dedicated to games you can play for fun and contests you can enter to try to win prizes.
- Message Boards: The IMDb's guest lounge where you can discuss a variety of movie and TV related topics with your fellow users. Though registration is required to post public messages on the boards or send private messages to other users of the IMDb message boards, all visitors are welcome to read the public messages.
- IMDb Recommends: (formerly "The IMDb Shop" tab) We spend a lot of time watching movies and browsing the web, and people are often asking us for advice. This section starts off with our "recommendation engine" which uses a complex formula to find movies in our database that you might like based on a movie you tell us you know you like.
Following the engine and in the lefthand column are a variety of shopping-related links. In the lefthand column you'll find links to various movie-related shopping areas at our parent company, Amazon.com, such as videos, books, and home electronics. In the main section of the page, you'll find our weekly picks of stuff you can get at Amazon.com or from our friends in their zShops section we think is cool and believe other movie lovers will also find cool. Plus we do seasonal theme shops (like Christmas-related merchandise).
NOTE: The IMDb does not actually sell anything ourselves (other than advertising on our site). All sales are through and fulfilled by Amazon.com or their auction and zShops vendors.
- Help & Guide: This is the section you're in now, containing just about everything you want/need to know about the IMDb... our history, how to contact us, and the IMDb University classes.
AND WHEN YOU LOOK DOWN...
When you look down, you'll find a selection of text links and other information. The text links duplicate the links in the tabs (for our users who can't view graphics) plus a few more we think are worthwhile, such as links to our New Releases section, our section about movies that are currently in production, our list of the top 250 movies in the IMDb (based on votes from our users), etc. It looks like this...
Return to Top
LESSON 2: LOOK LEFT
As you may have noted in our discussion of the "What's Hot" and "IMDb Recommends" sections, we like to put interesting links in the lefthand column. In fact, you'll find just about the entire "Help & Guide" section broken down into its component parts in the lefthand column of this page.
When you're on the page for a movie, you'll find all the categories of information we have on movies there. If we have information for that movie in a category, it will be linked. If not, it will be grey. And it's the same thing when you look up people.
Some of the more fun (in our opinion) links for people and movies are...
MOVIES/TV
- Awards & Nominations: if this movie/show has been nominated for or won an award in any of the hundreds of award ceremonies and festivals we catalog, you'll find information about it here.
- External Reviews: takes you to a page with links to reviews we've found (or been pointed to) around the web from major reviewers, semi-knowns and even semi-unknowns.
- Memorable Quotes: cool quotes our staff or users have liked enough to submit them for inclusion.
- Crazy Credits: in some of the funnier films, they include odd stuff in the credits. Most movies have a "best boy," but Priscilla, Queen of the Desert had a "best naughty boy."
PEOPLE
- Credited With: this is the ultimate link for people who like to play the Kevin Bacon game. You can find ALL the actors, directors, etc. someone's worked with in their career, or you can check for projects where they've worked with a specific person.
- Other Works: we're not the Internet Musical Theatre Database, but when we find out that someone's been in a musical, be it a touring company or a Broadway production, we list it here. Also noted are commercials, plays, radio work, etc.
- Miscellaneous: found in the "External Links" section, this is where we catalog all the fan sites and other related links people have submitted to us.
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LESSON 3: LOOK IN THE INDEX
When you haven't found what you're looking for by looking up, looking down, and looking left, the last place to check is our alphabetical index of features. On this page you'll find just about every feature at the IMDb listed in alphabetical order.
Of course, what you might be calling it in your mind and what we call it may be two different things, so if it doesn't come up under the letter you thought it would, try thinking of some other ways to describe it and look under those letters too.
If you've looked up, looked down, looked left and looked in the index and you still can't find it, there are two possibilities...
- We don't have it
- We've buried it so deep even we forgot about it. In this case, you might (as a very last resort) go to the more searches page linked at the bottom of the search box (which is at the top of the lefthand column on every page), scroll to the bottom of that page, and try the "Find IMDb Feature" search. Honestly, if all the other methods haven't worked, this probably won't either, but it's worth a shot before giving up.
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CONGRATULATIONS
You have completed the freshman level of the IMDb University... without incurring any student loans! You are now ready to be a happy member of the IMDb community, or if you'd like to increase your expertise, continue on to the Sophomore level.
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