Changing the minimum word length allowed for searching

When using the flexicontent search view, you may want to change the minimum search word length allowed.

Note that both FLEXIcontent and MySql pose a limit to this

  1. Set a minimum characters in the menu item pointing to search view
  2. Edit mysql.ini (or mysql.cnf, or my.ini) file and change variable "ft_min_word_len" to put a lower limit, e.g.:
    # The MySQL server
    [mysqld]
    ft_min_word_len=2
    you may want to ask your webhost support to do this for you,
    there is little overhead in reducing this to a value of 3 or 2,
    since the MySQL index will ignore the very common short words e.g. 'to'

  3. run in phpmyadmin
    REPAIR TABLE  ppp_flexicontent_items_ext
REPAIR TABLE ppp_flexicontent_advsearch_index
    this will make the search indexes to recreated/updated
ΝΟΤΕ 1: if you do not have access mysql.ini file to change this variable, then you will have to contact you web host provider ΝΟΤΕ 2: If using FLEXIcontent Search module, you will need to create a joomla menu item pointing to search view (if you don't have one already). ΝΟΤΕ 3: If you don't want the menu item to appear you can create it, inside the FLEXIcontent hidden menu (if it doesnot exist there already), this way the menu item will be activated, and the parameters defined in there will be used (e.g. the minimum characters parameter will be used) !!!