Forum search

[scurrier]

I tried searching for through vpn without quotes and got the error that "search keywords were too short, too long, or too common."

So, I put quotes on it and tried that. Same thing. So, I searched ping "through vpn" and then I got no results. I find it hard to believe that there's no threads that have these words.

Indeed, google was able to find this thread, which is the original thread I was looking for.

Is this expected or a bug?

Also, tangentially, I will mention that I think the "search this forum only" checkbox from the search dropdown should be unchecked by default. I believe when people go to a search box, they assume they are getting the most broad search with the defaults. From there, they can focus their search better using options such as this to drill down if they need to.

 

[gpsguy]

It's a feature - that most of us don't like.

Most of the time I use Google to find something that I know is on the forum. For example:

site:forums.freenas.org through vpn

 

[HolyK]

Even if i HATE this XenForo piece of *cough* and don't care about doing any fixes or improvements here, i totally understand your frustration so i've changed that search limit to 3 (from 4) so now it is working also for 3-letters words ...

EDIT: Ok, that bloody thing is still not able to find that specific thread. I tried: *through*vpn*, *through*vpn, *through vpn*, through*vpn*, *through vpn, through*vpn, through vpn* also with and without "Search titles only" checked ... no luck ... i give up and going to bed (2:26AM here...) ^^

 

[scurrier]

Hey HolyK. I really appreciate your efforts. I have no problem using google. Just thinking that others who have less experience on the forum might not be properly leery of the search results.

 

[Knowltey]

Yeah, pretty much all online web forum softwares out there have it set up in them that any words in a search less than 3 characters in length will be ignored. It's a feature that prevents overloading of the system with too many hits, but the unfortunate side effect for this especially when it comes to forums that deal with information technology related topics is that there are many acronyms that are commonly used that are less than three characters in length so you can't search for those quite common. One of the most common and most annoying things we come across here is that people aren't able to search for "ECC RAM" since both terms in aforementioned search query are automatically ignored by the forum software.

 

[scurrier]

But surely the addition of a descriptive word or another acronym limits the number of results. Like my use of "through" in this case. You'd think instead of imposing artificial screening on the search input, the server could just bail after reaching some limit on the number of results.

 

[Knowltey]

But surely the addition of a descriptive word or another acronym limits the number of results. Like my use of "through" in this case. You'd think instead of imposing artificial screening on the search input, the server could just bail after reaching some limit on the number of results.

That'd be nice, but regardless it still throws out any words in the search query that are 3 characters or less in length, so if you searched for "ECC Memory" all it is going to search for it memory so you may or may not have as easy of a time finding what you were wanting to look for, and in that case even the possibility that what you are looking for won't show up because in most instances here on the forums when we are talking about ECC RAM we use the phrase "ECC RAM" rather than ECC memory.

 

[HolyK]

Well depends on the engine. vBulletin is much more "intelligent" than this XF. It has an option to include or exclude custom words to/from the search even if it does not "fit" the character limit. Well ... another feature which was here in the past before someone said "hey, lets migrate to Xenforo"... but that's another story. ;)

 

[Knowltey]

Yeah, not familiar with the adminstrative features of XenForo, some have the capability to remove said restriction or edit it some don't.