Hi everyone, firstly thanks for reading this post. I really appreciate it if this can be improved.

I am quite a new member to LYN but an active one. I have been using the search feature for quite some time and I realise there is a flaw. It does not allow us to search for queries less than 4 characters..

Just like today i was looking for anyone sellling thermaltake blue orb II, I went to the garage sales section and tried

'blue orb ii' <---cannot cos does not recognise orb and ii
'blue' <--- XD this was simply ridiculous obviously
'thermaltake' <--- too many search results
'thermaltake blue' <--- returns many results that are non related to the HSF that I am looking for..

Anyway, I just want to know if the admin peeps can do anything about this. Would really appreciate it. And I think it will benefit other forumers too... anyone agree with me?

This post has been edited by J-Slade: Oct 10 2006, 09:31 PM

I agree...

I also agree coz this could make forum search engine much easier!

try using google if it is under 4 words.
it works for me

ADD:
TS,does this work for you? click me

This post has been edited by Mgsrulz: Oct 10 2006, 09:42 PM

I noticed that works. But is there a way that we can integrate this google way of searching into the forums search engine? Including the parameters of " " (err.. i think only google users will understand what that does.. haha )

anyway, is there a way to do that.

*addon*

I wanna add smtg, the google search feature doesnt limit the search by subforums... so it'll just return results from the WHOLE forum which can return confusing results

This post has been edited by J-Slade: Oct 10 2006, 09:44 PM

how about this?
include the word "garage sale" in the search column,and only the garage sales section will be searched

I've been playing around with the search feature.. the google one... yea I guess adding " " will bring u to the right subforum... but it will return many many results some of which are repeats. I really like the LYN forum search engine. Would be really good if it can search for words with 3 characters and below ... at least 3 characters la.. 2 characters will be a bit too much cos it will return waaaay to many results.

reason for the 4 minimum characters;

we have a full write up on how to use the search feature on the site to maximum effect.

http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?act=faq&article=2

As for your suggestion for upgrading the search function, we have that in our long term plans, but due to the complexity of creating a search feature which will be independent of the postings, it will take quite a bit of time. We also require lots of time to test it out as searching a 1.5 million post database for terms like "the" or "my" is going to bring the server down to a crawl.

but keep your fingers crossed, wkkay might be able to work some magic soon

I see... I guess it isnt so easy after all. But hey, all the best to the admins for their hard work in improving the forums...

Thanks guys for listening =)

I'm working on an improvement, expect it around this weekend. Keep you posted.

interested to know what is the effort to improve the search function in the forumn.
maybe other forumer can give some suggestion or learn something here?

I'll probably post it up at the dev blog when I'm done. It needs a little dusting

i guess in the meantime you can use this technique that i use...

eg. microsoft excel show formula

"excel" <--- too many results then;
Ctrl+F "excel" <--- Microsoft Excel Q&A then;
"formula" <---done or ctrl+F or next page. repeat till done.