Please allow 1 + 2 character search strings in the forum search

[porg]

Again and again the Pandora forum limitation "3 character or more per each search term" annoys me.


Could the forum admin please finally remove this?


A short search addendum such as a "1, 2, 3, CC, GC, 2D, 3D" often makes a difference.


Would be nice if they would be allowed!

 

[Binky]

Indeed. Perhaps the restriction should be that the search string must be at least three characters, not that each term must be.


This would continue to prevent ED's server from being swamped searching for the word 'a'

 

[steveway]

The problem is not with the search of those short strings. It's the indexing. As you may not realize, most search engines index the possible strings beforehand. This costs a lot of time to do (no big problem since this needs to be done only once) and it needs to be stored. Imagin storing every occurence of the 2 letter combination "ne". In my sentence alone you will find a big amount of those. This takes up a lot of space and won't really be useful for anyone searching anything. Just a little fyi for everyone.

 

[Binky]

most search engines

I know google (etc) do that, but does that include the forum search tool?

 

[porg]

Even if indexing them is not possible, for a better usability I would tolerate having to wait longer for a live search, if I issue that special 1 + 2 letter queries.


Better have them at some cost compared to not have them at all.

 

[F_Slim]

You could just use google with


"<search term> site:http://boards.openpandora.org"

 

[porg]

3 letter search term falsely displays "No results" although there ARE results!

Today I used the forum search, to search for "USB", and the forum software told me: "No results found for 'usb'."

There must be a mis-configuration or bug, as this is obviously not true, as the term USB comes up both in the content and titles of posts.

 

[liveunderwater]

Internal searches here have always been fifty/fifty for me.  Fifty percent chance I get what I'm looking for and fifty percent chance I get a load of junk.  Then I found View New Content button and said screw it.  porg has a seriously relevant point here.

 

[Eddie]

Well.....

You can use google syntax to search for you. (in the case that this dosnt get enabled)

Enter this into google search.

 USB site:http://boards.openpandora.org/

it also works for one letter stuff like the letter "a"

 a site:http://boards.openpandora.org/

Here is a reference to some other useful google syntax https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/136861?hl=en

Hope this helps as a workaround

EDIT**  I just noticed that F_Slim had already listed this, my bad. Going to leave the post as it will hopefully work as a continuation as to what he was suggesting.

 

[porg]

Forum admin ED now allows 2 character searches, but still not 1 charater searches.

 

[Binky]

Why would you want to search for a single character?

 

[porg]

I.e. to get results for specifically Game Title 2 versus Game Title 4.

But ED hinted that searching for "Game Title 4" (with quotes) will do the trick of including the differentiating 1 character.