exact phrase searches in VBulletin?

[ginahoy]

I run a large professional group on LinkedIn, which I will soon be moving to an independent website using VB4. I just called sales support and the rep told me that the ability to search for "exact phrases" was removed from VBulletin, and offered no explanation why.

Can someone confirm if this is indeed true, and if so, recommend a mod to restore that capability? The ability to search for exact phrases is critical for finding useful information in our archives. I do not want to rely on Google for this. Thx.

[Dave]

As far as I know vBulletin 4 still has this feature?

[ginahoy]

Thanks, Dave. The rep was simply repeating what a tech resource was communicating to him on his terminal, but he said it was removed from VB4 as well as VB5. But given that this is 3rd hand information at this point, I really hope someone who runs a VB4 board can confirm, one way or another.

[Dave]

vB4:

http://puu.sh/oGAlA/5e326497be.png

[ginahoy]

I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at. The Exact Match radio button appears to be specific to Phrase Manger. I can't find a general definition of what Phrase Manager is, but it doesn't look like this has anything to do with configuring the forum search engine. ??

[Dave]

Ah... I assumed you were talking about the language / phrase manager of vBulletin. Didn't know you were talking about a search engine.

[Gio~Logist]

You can search by exact username name but not exact search keywords.

That will require some custom work to restore the functionality.

[ginahoy]

Originally Posted by Gio~Logist

You can search by exact username name but not exact search keywords.

That will require some custom work to restore the functionality.

Why on earth would a functionality like this be removed from a software package?! If certain forum operators don't want to support exact searches for whatever reason, then provide a means to disable it in the CP. Don't just rip out out!

I also looked at PHPbb but discovered it also doesn't support exact phrase searches. This makes no sense at all. LinkedIn's suck-ass search engine is one of the main reasons I'm moving my group elsewhere.

Can someone refer me to a forum platform with a fully functional search engine?

[Gio~Logist]

Originally Posted by ginahoy

Why on earth would a functionality like this be removed from a software package?! If certain forum operators don't want to support exact searches for whatever reason, then provide a means to disable it in the CP. Don't just rip out out!

I also looked at PHPbb but discovered it also doesn't support exact phrase searches. This makes no sense at all. LinkedIn's suck-ass search engine is one of the main reasons I'm moving my group elsewhere.

Can someone refer me to a forum platform with a fully functional search engine?

This issue is really something that can be easily resolved within 1-2 hours of work or less.

[ginahoy]

I just registered for the VB4 demo. Unfortunately the search engine in the demo appears to be broken. I couldn't get any search to work, so I'm guessing the index must be empty. I rebuilt the index and search engine appears to now be working.

The sample post set up in the demo includes the following phrase: "administrative facilities available"

First, I searched for those three words without quotes. The search engine correctly returns the post. If I add a nonsense word to the search, it still returns the post. This confirms the search engine works as the logical OR -- i.e, it returns posts that contain any of the search words. Apparently there's no option to search for all words.

Now if I add quotes, it returns an error:

The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search:
"administrative facilities available"

What's happening here is that the word length checking routine evaluates the quoted string as a single word (including the quotes themselves, as it turns out). From the Admin Control Panel I increased the max word length to 40. Now, when I search for that same string, it correctly returns the post.

However, if I remove the middle word like this: "administrative available", it returns returns the post, confirming that the VB4 search engine is still searching for individual words within the quotes in any order (e.g., no exact phrase search capability). Darn. I also confirmed that even with quotes, it process the search as an OR function.

I saw one strangeness I can't explain. The sample post includes the phrase "24 hours after", but if I omit the middle word and search for "24 after" in quotes, it returns no match. (the min. word length is set to 4, and remember, the word length checker evaluates this as a 10-character word). Although this might suggest the quotes are being processed as an exact phrase search, I was unable to replicate that with any other 3 word string from the sample post. Strange indeed.