9 replies to this topic

[LisaWeb]

I absolutely love the wealth of knowledge housed in this forum, it is an awesome resource, and I refer to it daily. However, I am frustrated with the search limitations. Maybe if I explain, something could be done to improve the situation.

Wanting to learn more about "IBP" (Internet Business Promoter) I did a search for IBP using the forum search tool. Unfortunately, I got an unsympathetic message telling me I couldn't make searches for anything containing less that 4 characters, they were simply not allowed. So I tried "Internet Business Promoter". Lots of results, but none of them were relevant, the keywords by themselves are just too ubiquitous.

Well, time to weigh in my strategy, and start thinking outside the box. So I do a Google Site Search and search HighRankings.com for "IBP", and see what threads I can find. The top ranking link took me to a thread from 2003, so I backtracked and clicked on the second link. This takes me to a pretty recent thread posted in February, by someone asking for feedback on IBP. "Great!" I say, "Now I'll get some info!"

But I was sadly mistaken. In the only reply to the post, an administrator stated "Please see other threads on this topic." I wanted to respond by asking for help to find the threads on IBP since the term is unsearchable, but sadly the thread was closed.

So please, HighRanking Admin gods, can you either loosen the restrictions on the searches, or take a few minutes to post a few helpful threads when the question can't possibly be searched? It would sure help those of us who are looking for information on IBP, PHP, SES, SEM, SEO, IPB, CSS, AOL, ASP, BBS, CFM, CGI, CPC, CTR, CRM, DNS, GNU, SSL, IIS, ISP, ISO, KDA, MSN, SQL, NDA, PPC, RSS, SEP, SMO, SSI, SWF, TOS, VPN, or WWW - as rarely are these highly used SEO acronyms are ever worded by their full names.

Thanks for listening.

[Jill]

Welcome, LisaWeb!

Unfortunately, there's not much we can do about the forum search as it's a function of the software we use. We did have Google search enabled at one time, but I don't think it got upgraded in our previous upgrade. I'll see if Scottie might have some time this month to enable that again as I miss it as well.

[Scottie]

I forgot that wasn't on there anymore! I'll add it back in.

[Ron Carnell]

The "Minimum search word length" is a setting in the Admin panel of IBP. The default is 4, but it can be set either higher or lower. The lower the setting, the larger the table will be for search keywords. I would never recommend 1 or 2 as a minimum, but 3 on a dedicated server with plenty of disk space is probably doable. It will slow down search a little, but in a forum of this size, probably only a little.

Another alternative is to set "Type of search to use" to Full Text. This eliminates the keyword table and searches the posts directly. It's much more server intensive, but again, on a dedicated box it's certainly in the realm of doable.

My suggestion would be to consider ramping up our search function a bit on a temporary basis. Keep an eye on server resources for a while and then make a final decision?

[Scottie]

We do have full text search turned on, which negates the minimum character setting- it's been set to 1 all along.

But in general, IPB's search function is well... not Google. I have struggled to find past posts as well that have nothing to do with the number of characters. I'd recommend using the G-search on anything that isn't really new... the newest posts won't be in G yet but most of the rest should be.

[Randy]

ermm... just to be ultra techy...

I believe you'll need to be running MySQL 4 or greater for it to work, which I assume is on the server. If memory serves the ability to change the minimum word length didn't show up until 4.0.

But even then to use FullText and get to less than 4 characters you'd need the default MySQL settings to be tweaked a bit, because that's a MySQL thing. The lowest with a default MySQL install is 4 letters, as it was in previous MySQL versions. The way to change that in MySQL is to use a command in the MySQL configuation file (usually /etc/my.cnf) by adding a line in the [mysqld] section that says: ft_min_word_len = 3 or whatever you want the minimum word length value you want. There is a bit of a performance hit, so you don't want to get too carried away. And of course it requires SuperUser privileges on the server.

After making the config tweak you then need to reformat the FullText table for the new value. That one is REPAIR TABLE your_table_name QUICK You'll probably want to stop and restart MySQL before running to make sure the new configuration is read and available. Don't remember off the top of my head if tha's a requirement or not.

Without the above two things being done it won't work. You won't get an error message per se, but it just won't work as expected.

While you're doing that you'll also want to make sure Caching is enabled in MySQL. In the same area of the my.cnf file make sure there's a line that says query_cache_type=1 and set the cache size to a reasonable level. I set my servers up to have a 10 meg MySQL cache with query_cache_size = 10m

In other words, it's usually not quite as easy as making a tick in the forum software cuz by default MySQL is not going to have everything enabled that needs to be enabled. Or at least none of my default MySQL installs have had everything enabled to allow 3 letter word searches.

[LisaWeb]

Wow Randy. Will you come work for me?

Seriously, you've nailed it. Not sure how things are set up here, but I could get this done with one quick call to my host.

Really appreciate all of your replies as well. It's a awesome forum where everyone jumps in as a team to address an issue a newbie is compaining about. You guys are great!

[Randy]

Wow Randy. Will you come work for me?

Sure Lisa. But I'm expensive. And would probably be a major pain in the tush since I've worked for myself for something over a decade now. I doubt I take directlion nearly as well back in my Corporate days.

Oh, and welcome to HRF !

[Scottie]

We're upgrading the server shortly, in part because our MySQL and PHP are really out of date. We'll take a look at these tweaks when it happens!

[Randy]

It's an easy one when you're already doing a server upgrade Scottie. Give a shout if you want me to send you the my.cnf I use on my Plesk servers running MySQL 4.x.x. Unless you're going all the way to MySQL 5. I've not pressure tested my normal config on a production server with 5 yet. Though I'd be willing to bet it'll probably work just fine.