Forum search

Try to begin there , there is not really one post explaining how to do this, but a handful of questions and answers which can help

phpBB is a wonderful forum, stable and almost bullet proof once it's set up.

Regretably it's search function is horrid and nearly useless unless an advanced search is allowed and even then it's not all that good.

The sad part is this is an example of WAD as in Works as designed. The developers say, and there's a lot of truth to this, that a fuller search function, like Google's, would chew up an incredible amount of CPU time and resources on your server.

The alternative of simply dropping to "common words" or "too short words" from their list before performing the search doesn't seem to have occured to them. At least I've never been able to find an option for that in the admin screens of phpBB.

To say it's maddening to the point of uselessness in a busy and technical web site is understatement without a fair amount of hacking at the code. My solution has been to drop it completely and regress to another forum solution.

It's sad because it's such a good product that, IMHO, is crippled by a horrid and nearly useless search function.

ttfn

John