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Search help


Steve Warman

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Hi,

I was wondering of you could give me some help?

I'm searching for topics in the defender forum on dim dip problems but when using the search funtion it doesn't retrieve any despite one showing up in the recent new posts view..

i've searched for '+dim +dip' and 'dim dip' and 'dip' using the search within forum, search all forums and the advanced option of sarching topic titles and topic text.

Any ideas why it's not returning any results?

Thanks

Steve

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The forum won't search less than 4 letters in a word. Infuriating yes, but the reason is to reduce load on the server.

I don't know if that's an issue on this server, but there's the technical reason.

I have run up against it on several occasions.

It can be changed but the mods have resisted similar requests before I think.

Advanced search on Google is your friend.

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Thanks for the replies.

I'm fine with the search requiring more than 3characters but the error message returned don't indicate this is the case.

(sorry i test software for a living and am a bit of a stickler for correct and full error messages).

I'll amend my search and try google as well.

Thanks

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The forum won't search less than 4 letters in a word. Infuriating yes, but the reason is to reduce load on the server.

Spot on - the search indexing underlying the forum search doesn't index anything under four characters. Which is a right PITA for us: V8, Tdi, 90, 110...you see where I'm heading?

It can be changed but the mods have resisted similar requests before I think.

Technically true - except that the only way it can be changed is by switching back to the 'basic' search, which doesn't use the indexing. We had to switch from that when the forum was less than a year old as it couldn't cope with the number of posts and was unusably slow. There are now several times as many posts and it is very unlikely it would work at all.

As said, google is your friend. Wonder if we should look at embedding a google search in the site, preset to only search lr4x4? :unsure:

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Only way round it that I know of is to use the asterisk wildcard carefully.

Searching for dip* will return all results with the word dip in them, but the downside is it will return all results with words that start with dip, such as dipped.

For what you are searching for dip* does come back with lots of relevant results but dim* returns lots or results with the word dimensions in!

I while back I heard of a program called sphinx which you install on the server, there is then add on modules for various forums which let you then search much faster and use only 2 characters, I think there was a version for IPB but it was only in Beta at the time, not sure if it has moved on yet?

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I while back I heard of a program called sphinx which you install on the server, there is then add on modules for various forums which let you then search much faster and use only 2 characters, I think there was a version for IPB but it was only in Beta at the time, not sure if it has moved on yet?

Not come across that before - I'll look into it. We have our own (leased) server, so probably can install it if we want to.

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Hope it helps - not sure it's quite ready though yet from a quick scan through

Then it's not going on here :rolleyes:

We put a lot of effort into going nowhere near the bleeding edge of technology - nice, well proven reliability is where it's at for this forum....

...we've got enough hassle from our landrovers without dodgy software to nursemaid! :lol:

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