Help with understanding apartment rental websites

Hello, after some searches on this forum I've noticed many of you suggest this website: www.wg-gesucht.de for finding a temporary (furnished) place.

I will be in Germany for approx. 4 months, starting in May. right now I am looking for a place, but it's not so easy (currently located in north america); I am using online translation site to interpret the wg-gesucht.de website. I have one question in particular - how can I tell for how long the room will be available for? I do see "min. available date" and "latest available date" but no info on duration of rental.. am I missing something? If anyone is familiar with this website, or you've found room using that site, could you please help me out if you don't mind.

I also checked out http://www.easywg.de/ but it seems this site requires me to pay $ and sign up in order to be able to contact the advertisers. Is there no way of getting in touch without paying the fee?

Thanks in advance.

p.s. I am looking for a place in Berlin (finally made up my mind)

wg-gesucht.de is probably the best one, especially if you're looking for short time rental

frei ab <- first day you can move in
(frei bis) <- day you have to move out
WG-Zimmer <- shared apartment
1-Zimmer-Wohnung <- apartment (1 room)
Mehrzimmerwohnung <- apartment (>1 rooms)
Detailfilter einblenden + Möbliert: ja <- furnished

Thanks a lot for your help! I wasn't exactly sure what (frei bis) meant because some posters' "frei ab" and "frei bis" dates were so close to each other that I didn't think it would mean what I thought it could mean (but I guess some people do want to rent out even for few weeks).

Lastly, if I am looking to move in early may, do you think now is the right time to look ? or is there any point in searching a bit later (in case more rentals are posted)

Thanks in advance

Don't know, it probably can't hurt to check often and it's only 2 more months. But Berlin is an easy place for renting, so it shouldn't be too hard to find something on short notice as well.

See the Apartment Rental wiki page for a list of abbreviations.