There have been alot of complaints recently about the search function on this site and it "lacking"... I disagree. We have made one change which allows the site to index 3 letter words (and greater) -- the previous limit was 4. The lower the number, the more resource intensive it is on the server.
We also support boolean searches, which sare also resource intensive -- all search queries use boolean by default now.
If you want to learn to search like a pro, the following "key" will help you.
Code:
The boolean full-text search capability supports the following operators:
*
+
A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in each row that is returned.
*
-
A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any of the rows that are returned.
Note: The - operator acts only to exclude rows that are otherwise matched by other search terms. Thus, a boolean-mode search that contains only terms preceded by - returns an empty result. It does not return “all rows except those containing any of the excluded terms.”
*
(no operator)
By default (when neither + nor - is specified) the word is optional, but the rows that contain it are rated higher. This mimics the behavior of MATCH() ... AGAINST() without the IN BOOLEAN MODE modifier.
*
> <
These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a row. The > operator increases the contribution and the < operator decreases it. See the example following this list.
*
( )
Parentheses group words into subexpressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.
*
~
A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word's contribution to the row's relevance to be negative. This is useful for marking “noise” words. A row containing such a word is rated lower than others, but is not excluded altogether, as it would be with the - operator.
*
*
The asterisk serves as the truncation (or wildcard) operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.
*
"
A phrase that is enclosed within double quote (‘"’) characters matches only rows that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed. The full-text engine splits the phrase into words, performs a search in the FULLTEXT index for the words. The engine then performs a substring search for the phrase in the records that are found, so the match must include non-word characters in the phrase. For example, "test phrase" does not match "test, phrase".
If the phrase contains no words that are in the index, the result is empty. For example, if all words are either stopwords or shorter than the minimum length of indexed words, the result is empty.
The following examples demonstrate some search strings that use boolean full-text operators:
*
'apple banana'
Find rows that contain at least one of the two words.
*
'+apple +juice'
Find rows that contain both words.
*
'+apple macintosh'
Find rows that contain the word “apple”, but rank rows higher if they also contain “macintosh”.
*
'+apple -macintosh'
Find rows that contain the word “apple” but not “macintosh”.
*
'+apple ~macintosh'
Find rows that contain the word “apple”, but if the row also contains the word “macintosh”, rate it lower than if row does not. This is “softer” than a search for '+apple -macintosh', for which the presence of “macintosh” causes the row not to be returned at all.
*
'+apple +(>turnover <strudel)'
Find rows that contain the words “apple” and “turnover”, or “apple” and “strudel” (in any order), but rank “apple turnover” higher than “apple strudel”.
*
'apple*'
Find rows that contain words such as “apple”, “apples”, “applesauce”, or “applet”.
*
'"some words"'
Find rows that contain the exact phrase “some words” (for example, rows that contain “some words of wisdom” but not “some noise words”). Note that the ‘"’ characters that enclose the phrase are operator characters that delimit the phrase. They are not the quotes that enclose the search string itself.
The quick search should probably be "literal" and not an advanced option.
Some people are just impossible to please, I guess. You whine about the 'elementary' fashion of the search engine, but then say you want it "dumbed down".
Quote:
My typed text is hiding behind the banner ad. Sometimes it hides, sometimes not.
Flash banner ads will do this. Standard gif/jpg ads wont. You can make your window wider if possible so the banners dont obscure the search. That is the only solution.
sweet i hated the 3 letter restiction, how much more intensive is it on resources? im in school for network security and have taken a microcrap sever class but didnt really get into web hosting it was mostly roaming profiles and dns serves.
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"The calvary ain't riding in to save us, folks. It's up to us to save Texas." -- Kinky Friedman
sweet i hated the 3 letter restiction, how much more intensive is it on resources? im in school for network security and have taken a microcrap sever class but didnt really get into web hosting it was mostly roaming profiles and dns serves.
I havent noticed much of a load yet from the difference.. but this site is relatively small. On one site I run, with over 47,000 subscribers and over 1000 online at any given time, I'm pretty sure it would make quite an impact.
do signatures have an effect on searching? I.e. someone who mentions a trd exhaust or trd intake in their signature, will this set off a trigger in a search bringing up false results?
LOL, it's always worked fine for me. No matter how many tutorials you post 1/4 of the people still won't use it. It's the old, egotistical, thinking that "my question is so important that I have to have it answered now and it warrants a new thread."
Rest in peace little buddies
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