Bug 7430 – forum search

• Product: Websites
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Description Gene Imes 2002-09-03 16:34:14 UTC]

I recommend that a similar search system to 'google' be implemented. So that
quotes may be used to match exact phrases or '-' and '+' to exclude/include any
words.

Unless I have missed something it is very hard to narrow a search.

[Comment 1 Kyle Manna (RETIRED) 2002-11-12 16:43:44 UTC]

Provided that you know how mySQL queries work, you can accomplish this by using
"AND" or "OR".

The Gentoo Forum search engine is lacking, and that is more or less a result of
the phpBB software we run.  It would be way too hard to maintain an updated
search engine as phpBB evolves on its own.

Another short comming I'd like to point out is the inability to search for words
less then 3 characters.  ie: searching for "su" will return nothing.

[Comment 2 Kyle Manna (RETIRED) 2003-04-25 11:23:22 UTC]

I'd imagine that an updated search function is slated in phpbb 2.1/2.2.  I don't have the time or the reasources to write an updated function.

[Comment 3 Walter Ray-Dulany 2005-09-07 19:25:57 UTC]

In addition to dropping words shorter than three letters, it also drops periods
(so, for example, a search for 'php5.1' appears to parse this as 'php5' and '1',
and will thus drop the '1' (since it is a word of less than three characters);
on the other hand, a search for 'php5.000', when it returns, shows a search
string of 'php5' and '000'. 

I realize (at least some of) the problems involved in fixing this, but JEEZ, put
up a warning or something on the forums, so that people can write posts that
include words like "php51" rather than "php5.1" since it is litterally
impossible to search for such a term. An explanation of how not to use the forum
search engine and suggestions for how to make one's posts visible to the search
engine would make its even more useful than it already is, and wouldn't require
anything more than a few minutes of time of someone who knows the problems (i.e.
no one has to write any code). 

I'll let this sit here for a while, and if it doesn't get a response, I'll post
it as a new bug (not sure if anyone reads resolved bugs to try to fix them).