Is there a way this can be changed? Right now it is at 4 characters and it won't search with less than that.
This is a problem if say I want to search with "512" for example just a second ago I was going to suggest to "steve" to use the search feature cause I know we have discussed the 512Megs Win98 Not Enough Memory problem before. In the old forums I think you could search for that, but not here.

I have to admit 4 characters is a little unresonable when dealing with computers...

Some of the most popular searches may very well be 3 letters because of all the acronyms computer lingo uses..

CPU, RAM, ISA, PCI, VGA, AGP, CDR, bus, GPU, HSF, AMD, IBM, Ghz, Mhz, CFM, fan, IDE, ATA, DMA, PIO, 3DS :), DDR, SDR, TFT, LCD...

Just to name a few.

Even if you are trying to search for a phrase that you remember was a topic title... "Why does ..." it picks up on < 4 characters per word.
Very unreasonable I think.
Still remember searching for "PSU" not that long ago and being told the words in the search phrase had to be greater than 4 characters.

AMEN to that!

It's quite hard to find what you're looking for with all the acronymes being 3 letters...

Please, pretty pretty please change it to 3 letters!

To say the truth this has bothered myself quite a bit so I guess I will change the settings, now down to 3.Minimum Word Length
Enter the minimum word length that the search engine is to index. The smaller this number is, the larger your search index, and conversely your database is going to be. This is the main reason vB is default configured to 4 minimum characters, I guess putting it down to 3 won't hurt us much for now, however if you notice slowdows please let me know.

Originally posted by TS | Julio
however if you notice slowdows please let me know.

Will do...


And Thank You!:)

The search function allows for 3 letter searches now but I'm not sure it works well. I've tryed doing a search on "DMA" & had no results returned. Surely we've discussed DMA subjects allready in at least one of the new forums.:confused:

This is weird. If I do a search on DMA, I get this thread as a result yet this one ( Enabling DMA in XP? (http://www.3dspotlight.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1355&highlight=enable) ) doesn't show up. I did select "search all open forums"...

This forum probably has to be reindexed in order to make the new changes. While I won't explain how most Indexes work, I will tell you that the forum software basically summarizes the entire forum. This where PHP abilities will likely shine the most.

To prove the indexing theory, you'll notice THIS thread is searchable, where the one specifically about DMA is not. Every new thread is probably being indexed, but the old ones have been left alone by the forum sofware because it would be highly inefficient to contually index the entire message board all the time.

since Search Feature is my friend (http://www.3dspotlight.com/vb/search.php?s=) I used the advance query tips for 3 letter words.

Advanced query: Join words with AND, OR and NOT to control your search in more detail.
Add asterisks (*) to use wild cards in your search (*bullet* matches vBulletin etc.)

Looks like minimum is four again :confused:

Yup.
I've given up and just remembering the post URL's or writing them down the the back of my hand in ink rather than using search ;) :D

This does pose a problem since I'm trying to search for the Geforce on PCI threads :dead: