How do you search forum posts?

Right on top of the page next to the magnifying glass icon. However the first result is likely to be a 10 year old post, so its a little clunky.

Once you see the forum posts, you can then filter them by date to see the latest ones.

How would I find live or active thread in this forum

You can drill down to more recent forum threads by.....

Putting the topic/key words you want to search for in the search box and hitting the "go" button.
Then use the "Filter by type" box on the left side of next page to search only the Travel Forum (or only "Tips and articles" or every other "type" the search turns up.)

Use the "Filter by date" box on the left side to choose forum threads only from the last 6 months, 1 year, etc.
Drilling down to more recent threads is usually important to when gathering the most current information. It's still sort of clunky but better than nothing.

Searching as described above works on my laptop but I can't find a search option when I'm on my phone or tablet-Android based. Any suggestions for that?

On my tablet, pressing the horizontal white bars in the top left opens the search box.

Happy Brexit Day, everyone.

I see a search band at the top of my phone and my tablet--both android.

Thanks folks. I mainly post with my phone and I don't think there is a search function on that platform.

EDIT - I found it. Not very intuitive.

Thanks all, this is helpful info, as I agree, the Search function is less than friendly.

I hate the Search function here so much that I hardly ever use it. I either go to the appropriate country forum and scroll backword, looking at thread titles, or I use Google and include ricksteves.com/travel-forum in the search string along with whatever subject I'm interested in.

I often use Google as follows. I do a search on my terms (say, "gluten free Italy"). I get an avalanche of results which I ignore. I then go to the top, under Settings, and choose Advance Search. In the box for Site or Domain, I put "community.ricksteves.com" for the Forum, or "ricksteves.com" for the whole sight (without the quotation marks). This can work better than the search on Rick's own site, particularly for finding my old posts (I just put "Harold" in with the search terms, which doesn't work on Rick's own search).

And yes, the search function here is hiding in plain sight. If you're on a desktop computer and using your browser in landscape mode, it's next to the dark blue Rick Steves' Europe, in the lightest possible type. If you're on a phone or tablet, or using your desktop browser in portrait mode, click the horizontal bars on the upper left, and search will appear.