[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by calorie

These edits basically change the search so that LIKE queries are used instead of MATCH AGAINST queries. Note that LIKE queries may be slower than MATCH AGAINST queries, so only apply these changes if wanted. However, you may find that you get more meaningful results using LIKE queries instead of MATCH AGAINST.

Perhaps it's worth explaining the difference between boolean fulltext searches and LIKE searches in MySQL?

Early versions of this hack used LIKE (which is also used by the release version of VBulletin). This allows you to find a search string, with an optional wildcard or so. Boolean fulltext also allows you to look for combinations of words, strings, etc, so that if you search for (e.g.) +book -page, you will find entries with the word book but not page.