[Mitch]

Does the Search function have a built in minimum character count?

I ask because the word ‘spa’ returns nothing, even though there are about a dozen records.

If so, and it’s set at minimum:4, how can I change that to minimum:3?

Thanks.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mitch

Sorry, nothing I can do about that. That is a character limit set at the db level. Some hosts set 3, some set 4. What is happening is that the db will toss any search that do not meet or exceed the set limit. If you have keyword search enabled, try disabling it and let the FULLTEXT search … you might get lucky and that’ll work.

[Mitch]

OK, I thought it was something coded in the plugin. I know that Relevanssi had a setting to change character count for what it would index. Different duck, I know, but I just wasn’t sure.

FWIW, ‘Fulltext’ only returns none. ‘Keyword’ only and Both return anything with those letters… e.g. ‘spa’ also returns StorageSpace. Oh well.

We’ll just educate users on the way search works.

Thanks as always for great, timely support.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mitch

If you convert the Connections tables to MyISAM using phpMyAdmin and the disable/reenable FULLTEXT, you should be able to turn off keyword search and enjoy the better search results that FULLTEXT will provide. fyi, in >= 0.8 I finally figured out how to choose the right DB storage engine by default based on PHP and the MySQL version so new user install should always support FULLTEXT. Older user that got stuck with keyword has to manually convert the tables, sorry!

[Mitch]

Greek is such a beautiful language… LOL.

Of what I understood, I looked in phpMyAdmin, and the wp_connections Table Options are already set as MyISAM.

The ‘Fulltext returns none’ (no results) I referenced above was returning nothing with using 3 letter search terms (e.g. ‘spa’). Set as Fulltext does return good data when used with search terms 4 letters and above.

There is nothing else I should need to do for the db tables is there?

using wp 4.0b2, connections 0.8.14

Thx.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mitch

Unfortunately, that’s about all the can be done. You said Relevanssi can adjust character counts … can you do three character searches with it? If you can, maybe I’ll have to dig into their code and figure out how they managed that.

[Mitch]

I use Relevanssi on one of my sites. I set the minimum at 4 characters. I searched on the front end for the word ‘spa’ = no results. I changed the minimum character count to 3, hit the reindex button, searched ‘spa’ again = about 10 results. Some results were not really applicable to the search term, but many were.

Hope this helps.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mitch

Ahhh, I think I know what their doing without even looking now … their building there own term index.

[Author]

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