Use exclude in search process related query string

So you can set Usergroup permissions to prevent access to certain forums, and when you setup a forum, you can set 'Index New Posts in Search Engine' to the 'No' option. Furthermore, another way to exclude forums from search results is to append exclude in the query string like so:

<a href="search.php?$session[sessionurl]do=getnew&exclude=1,2,3" accesskey="2">New Posts</a>
<a href="search.php?$session[sessionurl]do=getdaily&days=X&exclude=1,2,3" accesskey="2">X Day(s) Ago</a>

where exclude=1,2,3 means to exclude forums having forumid 1, 2, or 3 from search results and days=X means get only items from the last 24 * X hours. However if you should want to search for say unanswered threads (those threads having zero responses) like so:

<a href="search.php?$session[sessionurl]do=process&replyless=1&replylimit=0&exclude=1,2,3" accesskey="2">Unanswered Threads</a>

then the exclude variable in the query string is ignored. That is where this mini hack comes into play. It lets you use exclude in the process related query string (where no forum choice is set) to prevent threads having say zero responses from showing up in the search results for members permitted to access the forums.

While I searched around for an exisitng hack that allowed the use of both process and exclude in the same query string, I did not find such a hack although one may exist. So anyway there are two edits in one file necessary for this mini hack.

Support is only offered on an if/as time is available basis. If you use this mini hack, then click install.

[calorie]

Okay, perhaps recheck that the mod is correctly installed and that 91,92,99,103,119 are the correct forum ids. Also, the mod is for vB 3.0.3 so maybe, if after rechecking, could the difference between vB versions 3.0.1 and 3.0.3 be the issue?

[Nick0r]

useful hack, does this work for 3.0.6+?

[Byron]

How do I exclude Closed Threads?

[akanevsky]

Great hack. The bad thing is, it does not exclude subforums of the excluded forums...