Better Search in Forum

[dave_probertGA6e24]

This forum system is broken. What I mean is that it is not really very useful for doing searches with for specific items.

For example: search for "start using stack" - this is a command sequence in livecode and is not something strange for someone to search for, but the forum will not return any results stating that these are too common words (or some other rubbish). This even happens with the "Advanced" search. Putting quotes around the phrase does not change the result.

That is just one example of where the forum software fails.

Is there any chance of some other forum software that is more friendly to key Phrases (as opposed to key Words) and might at least provide some answers for a range of searches?

I know I'm not the only one who has this problem and it would be beneficial to all "newbies" to have some way for them to get closer to the answers they seek before posting yet another request of something that has already been answered.

Cheers,
Dave

[FourthWorld]

Good catch, Dave. In fact, trying your sample search both with and without quotes yields no results, yet I know there are posts containing that string.

Having recently written a custom search engine, my guess is that PHPBB is using a list of stop words, words to be excluded from indexing, which is too long for the vernacular of interest to a LiveCode audience.

What I don't know is whether PHPBB provides a means of editing that stop list.

I'll see if I can get some time to look that up, but if you happen to have time and interest to find the relevant PHPBB manual page on that I'd happily forward it to the RunRev team who manages this forum.

[sturgis]

Under general/search settings, might increase the common word threshold and see if it solves the issue. With lc being an english like language it might need to be set pretty high.

[FourthWorld]

Thanks for the tip - I've forward it in a note to the admin.