Search Sucks!!!!!!

[honeybee]

I tried searching for the following terms

General VB Faq

General VB FAQ Thread

"General VB FAQ Thread"

And all the times I get this stupid stupid idiotic message:

The search term you specified (vb) is under the minimum word length (3) and therefore will not be found. Please make this term longer.
If this term contains a wildcard, please make this term more specific.

For Peter the Pan's sake, can someone tell me how I can search for that unstuck thread of mine?

Sorry for the outburst. But the search function is worse than when it had been disabled temporarily during the upgrade of vBulletin a year back.

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[MartinLiss]

It's ironic but VB is one of the strings that you can't search for because it's less than three characters. However you can find your thread if you look for General AND FAQ.

[kleinma]

Originally posted by MartinLiss
It's ironic but VB is one of the strings that you can't search for because it's less than three characters. However you can find your thread if you look for General AND FAQ.

also in the next field over put your user name so it will limit to only ones you have posted in...

[honeybee]

Originally posted by kleinma
also in the next field over put your user name so it will limit to only ones you have posted in...

Thanks for the tip, but in this case the other settings don't matter. It just sucks anyway.

Marty, I followed your tip in another search related thread, and used VB*, and finally got the thread, so I guess I should thank you for that tip

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[scr0p]

Yeah, I wanted to search for "XP" once.

[kleinma]

perhaps we can extend the setting to allow 2 characters and not 1 characters? or only certain 2 letter phrases like VB, XP, DO, and other computer/vb keywords

[MartinLiss]

Originally posted by kleinma
perhaps we can extend the setting to allow 2 characters and not 1 characters? or only certain 2 letter phrases like VB, XP, DO, and other computer/vb keywords

I'll propose that to the Admins and let you know what they say.

[aafuss]

Now that is a wonderful proposal for the forum search function, MartinLiss-

[honeybee]

Originally posted by aafuss
Now that is a wonderful proposal for the forum search function

I do understand the point in not allowing two or one letter searches, i.e. the server loads and so on, but it just seems so weird you cannot search for a two-letter word. Sometimes I feel like coining a new term, "Two-Lettered Word" = something that cannot be searched for.

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[MartinLiss]

From Brad.

Dropping to 2 letter words will create a big index file. The index file will take a long, long time to create (hours).

I'll make a note to update the file next week (New Years) when the site should be slow. If after I re-run it we find the forum slows down, then we can reset the database back to a 3 character search limit.

[kleinma]

martin:
Did you suggest the limited 2 character limit? like only allowing such groupings like VB, XP, etc...

if it does make the search slower.. perhaps they can just limit it to a few select terms

[MartinLiss]

I suggested exactly what you proposed and Brad's response is above this post.

[aafuss]

Originally posted by kleinma
martin:
Did you suggest the limited 2 character limit? like only allowing such groupings like VB, XP, etc...

if it does make the search slower.. perhaps they can just limit it to a few select terms

I think that this seems like a good way ro resolve the problem.

[MartinLiss]

By accident I just found that you can locate something like IP Address by using IP_Address as the search key.

[honeybee]

Originally posted by MartinLiss
By accident I just found that you can locate something like IP Address by using IP_Address as the search key.

So you can search for VB_, or XP_ too?

Also since the last two days (now that the new year has started) I have yet to feel any slowdown on VBF.

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[MartinLiss]

I wasn't informed, but apparently the search has been updated because I just did a searcf for VB (by itself) and I did not run into the 3-letter limit.

[brad jones]

I've done a reindex for 2 letter terms; however, the processes did not go through all of the threads/posts -- unless the post numbers on the forum are wrong.


I'm rerunning the index tonight to see if I can get it to make it all the way through the forums. Right now you should be able to do 2 letter searches -- they just may not get all the posts. Tomorrow it should be complete. (It takes several hours to create the search database)

Brad!

[MartinLiss]

Brad, the post numbers on the forum may well be wrong considering that a lot of posts were lost.

[brad jones]

the post numbers on the forum may well be wrong considering that a lot of posts were lost.

I did the indexing again and came up with similar numbers, so I'll assume that everything was indexed. This means that two letter words are now in the index -- thus you can search for them.

Brad!

[honeybee]

Originally posted by brad jones
I did the indexing again and came up with similar numbers, so I'll assume that everything was indexed. This means that two letter words are now in the index -- thus you can search for them.

Brad!

Many thanks for that Funnily (or maybe not so funnily) I don't use search often

Yes, I too don't trust the post numbers 100%. A while back I had tried to tally my post count with the actual posts, but it mismatched. And asking somebody to fix it would've cost me a hundred odd posts

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