Question: Forum Searching

[vfb]

Sorry, I can't figure out on how to search for a string containing spaces, such as "The Ark".

If I try to enter that search string it gets converted into "The*Ark", and the results in that case are empty. Is there some way of searching for a literal string containing spaces? Is there some documentation on the search string format somewhere?

[Gandalf Parker]

Im afraid not.
But I also find it lacking at times. This wont be completely caught up if you are looking for a post done yesterday, but you can use the extended search ability of other search engines to get what you want. Such as...
Google:
"the ark" site:forum.shrapnelgames.com

[lch]

Sorry, I can't figure out on how to search for a string containing spaces, such as "The Ark".

If I try to enter that search string it gets converted into "The*Ark", and the results in that case are empty.
That is because the MySQL server is configured to only have a search index length of 4 characters and up (the default) instead of 3 characters for "the" and "arc". "the" is a stopword and would be ignored in any case. "ark" is too short. There is no way to find those with a forum search. The combined string "the ark" is not a valid search phrase because the database doesn't support full-text searches (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_text_search).

[Gandalf Parker]

Personally I dont see the advantage of in-house indexing anyway. Just have the sarch link go to a homemade google page that locks in the "site:" part of the search. Maybe even toss in some google-ads on the page and get some pennies from click-thrus.