ibe98765 Posted October 7, 2003 Share Posted October 7, 2003 Got this error message when trying to do a search:Sorry, an error occured. If you are unsure on how to use a feature, or don't know why you got this error message, try looking through the help files for more information.The error returned was: One or all of your search keywords were below 4 characters, please go back and increase the length of these search keywords. Why the limit on search character length? I had tried to search for a post I had did on K9 but couldn't do this and had to choose another keyword (spam). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted October 7, 2003 Share Posted October 7, 2003 That is how the forum software works to keep down the possible instance of searching for words like; the, a, it, at, etc. and bogging down the server.---The search feature is designed to allow you to quickly find topics and posts that contain the keywords you enter. The 'Simple Search' option from the drop down box allows you to enter a single keyword or phrase to search by - the advanced option allows you to join keywords with 'AND', 'OR' to fine tune the search. Using this option will make the search slightly slower. The bottom section of the form allows you to further fine tune the search. You can choose a category to search in, or a forum - or choose all forums to search in. If you enter a name into the 'Search by member name' section, all posts started or replied in by this member are returned. --- Here are some advanced features of the Search function on the Forums:Advanced Usage Helpapple banana Find posts that contain at least one of these words +apple +juice Find posts with both words +apple -juice Find posts with 'apple' but not 'juice' apple* Find posts with 'apple' and/or 'applesauce' "Some Words" Find posts with the phrase 'some words of wisdom', 'some words' but not 'some noise words' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amie Posted October 7, 2003 Share Posted October 7, 2003 It can be changed to accept words of less than 4 characters, Mike (LLfan) did it on our forum as it was a major bugbear with some of our members. We are using v1.2 as compared to v1.1.2 which this board uses, but I am sure he did the same before we upgraded.Amie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibe98765 Posted October 8, 2003 Author Share Posted October 8, 2003 That is how the forum software works to keep down the possible instance of searching for words like; the, a, it, at, etc. and bogging down the server.1. I'd like to see the number of search characters reduced to two. I doubt there is that much searching goin gon here and I don't think there will be any load increase on the server.If you enter a name into the 'Search by member name' section, all posts started or replied in by this member are returned.Not correct on this one. The filter by name selection only lets you do so in conjunction with a keyword. It WOULD BE nice to not have thsi restriction and to be able to bring up anyone's total posts by entering their userid only. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GolfProRM Posted October 8, 2003 Share Posted October 8, 2003 If you enter a name into the 'Search by member name' section, all posts started or replied in by this member are returned.Not correct on this one. The filter by name selection only lets you do so in conjunction with a keyword. It WOULD BE nice to not have thsi restriction and to be able to bring up anyone's total posts by entering their userid only. There is a radio button (right below the username field) that allows you to search by username only. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibe98765 Posted October 8, 2003 Author Share Posted October 8, 2003 If you enter a name into the 'Search by member name' section, all posts started or replied in by this member are returned.Not correct on this one. The filter by name selection only lets you do so in conjunction with a keyword. It WOULD BE nice to not have thsi restriction and to be able to bring up anyone's total posts by entering their userid only. There is a radio button (right below the username field) that allows you to search by username only. Hmmm. Don't know how I ever missed that. But it doesn't work anyway. I tried a search on my userid, didn't change any other settings and wound up with only 9 hits. I've probably made 200 posts in the last 30 days. What else am I doing wrong? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GolfProRM Posted October 8, 2003 Share Posted October 8, 2003 You made sure to change the category/forum which you were searching, right? Otherwise you'll just end up searching whatever forum you went to the search from. Mine showed up just fine when I searched my username Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scot Posted October 8, 2003 Share Posted October 8, 2003 You can also search for all posts by any member by Viewing the member's Profile and choosing "Find all posts by member." That returns a search like this:http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.ph...sult_type=postsThe problem with these results is that they are not chronological, which is annoying. Search in general with the board software is not refined, and the UI is bad.IBE, the search character thing is up to me. I've just had to switch servers because of load issues with the board. So I'm not ready to jump in to this. You are also the only person to ask for it during our first six+ months. If other people want it too, I will consider it. And perhaps evaluate it for a while. More people are running searches than you think, and as the forum ages and grows, searching is likely to increase.-- Scot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThunderRiver Posted October 8, 2003 Share Posted October 8, 2003 Yeah the search is abit painful when it comes to keywords that consisits of only 3 characters or less, such as DSL, Windows PE (where PE is less than 4), SMS (small business server), DME (digital media edition), and so on.. Neowin also has the similar problems, and pratically, it applies to all IPB that I have seen in the past. if Amie is right that the limit can be removed, it will be very very beneficial! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amie Posted October 8, 2003 Share Posted October 8, 2003 if Amie is right that the limit can be removed, it will be very very beneficial!Come and try it out on our board, our limit is 2 letters:http://www.mypcclinic.com/forum/I would be banging my head against a wall if I had to use 4 letters or more. :'( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Owyn Posted October 8, 2003 Share Posted October 8, 2003 IBE, the search character thing is up to me. I've just had to switch servers because of load issues with the board. So I'm not ready to jump in to this. You are also the only person to ask for it during our first six+ months. If other people want it too, I will consider it. And perhaps evaluate it for a while.I, unhappily, agree. I know that Woody's forum eg. (not using IPB) had to disable all access to Search at one point due to server load.apple* Find posts with 'apple' and/or 'applesauce'This does not work and in fact is not needed. It is the default mode for the search. ie. It does a contains search instead of a full word search. This implies that IPB does not use a separate indexer but in fact does a direct SELECT on the database. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havnblast Posted October 8, 2003 Share Posted October 8, 2003 I always find what I am looking for as it is setup now. I can see shortening it down to 2 characters can really add server load and I believe there is a lot of searching going on in the forum. It's quick and simple to find something without having to go back pages and pages looking for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibe98765 Posted October 8, 2003 Author Share Posted October 8, 2003 IBE, the search character thing is up to me. I've just had to switch servers because of load issues with the board. So I'm not ready to jump in to this. You are also the only person to ask for it during our first six+ months. If other people want it too, I will consider it. And perhaps evaluate it for a while.Hey, someone always has to be the first one. Might as well be me Once the board is stable, maybe you can conduct a test with a 2 character limit and see what happens. Personally, I don't use search often myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibe98765 Posted October 8, 2003 Author Share Posted October 8, 2003 I, unhappily, agree. I know that Woody's forum eg. (not using IPB) had to disable all access to Search at one point due to server load.Woody has nearly 11,000 active posters and 80,000 posts, significantly more than here. Also, their software is something that appears to be custom written, so who knows how effcient it is. The lack of search over there has had a lot of people up in arms and they have been promising a solution for some time now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Owyn Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 In their case the bottleneck was in the MySQL server. Search query load was overloading that server and normal transactions were getting caught in the log jam. The same thing that was just fixed here.I complained/commented about the limitations the first time I went to search for SQL, DSL, ...Learned to live with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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