Can we fix the search engine?

[Guest]

The forum search engine is very shoddy, and I think there's a lot to be improved. My suggestions in particular:

1. Allow searching for 3-letter words. Most of important acronyms and mod names are 3-letter words. That restriction makes searching for them impossible.

2. Restrict search to the current board. When I'm in "KSP Modding" section, I think that it makes sense to assume that I'm looking for a thread in "KSP Modding" section. That would clean up the searches instantly.

3. Boot "Search in thread title" to a taskbar button. It's an option in advance search, but sometimes I'd prefer to search through the titles, it's a lot faster. A separate button next to the normal "search" button would really make life easier for a lot of people.

I think that telling people things like "use Google to search our own forum" is really unprofessional and should not happen. The forum search engine should definitely be more usable. And I know some of this can be done, because Bohemia Interactive Studios forums also use vBulletin and their search is a lot better (not that good, either, but you do find less junk with it).

[FEichinger]

I'm not sure which forums of BI Studios you are using, but the one I use has the very same restrictions as this forum does: No 3-letter words, All Forums search by default, Search in Thread Title hidden in Advanced Search. The only difference is that they don't actually let you search from the menu bar, but force you to go through the Advanced Search page with no indication of such.

vBulletin search is notoriously bad and there's little that can be done about it - aside from replacing the built-in search.

[Specialist290]

I've actually had an off-and-on inclination for the past few months to write up a little tutorial on how to get the most out of the most out of the vBulletin search tools, since most of the issues people are reporting can be solved by going through the Advanced Search menu; vBulletin's basic search bar is a bit underwhelming.