There's a nice thread in the big boards forum about searching Though I doubt vB will run the search for their forums to show their software with a not-built-in software :P
This change was made because searching was causing search.php to time out and throw an error due to the number of records it was having to sort through. While it's possible to allow 3-letter words to be searchable with FULLTEXT searching turned on it's not something that can be changed from the admincp. Allowing 3-letter words would also fill the index up with a ton of new data that is bound to slow searching down again.
It's a catch-22 until someone comes up with a better way of searching records in a mySQL database. If your forum ever gets as large as this one you'll have the same problem.
I prefer fulltext indexing over the standard vBulletin one... it's actually easier to use if you know about it. Of course you are screwed with the short words anyway, but as Ziki (probably unknowingly) suggested you can search on Google to find things on this site.
I prefer fulltext indexing over the standard vBulletin one... it's actually easier to use if you know about it. Of course you are screwed with the short words anyway, but as Ziki (probably unknowingly) suggested you can search on Google to find things on this site.