I HATE IT!!!!
Let me explain why: It would be a great search feature, except it has one flaw..... the four letter word thing. Basically, you cannot have a keyword for the search that is under four characters. This means that you would not be able to search for something e.g. I had a query about the e-mail system on hosted sites, I tried to search for "how to access emails", and couldn't. The worst thing is, when you use a word under four letters, it doesn't exclude these words and use the other keywords for the search. No. It gives you and error message! And it's not always easy to change your keywords.... like if the most important one is under four letters you're..... going to get frustrated like me. And when you start a topic to ask this question and are told to search the forums first, you may have already tried but failed because of what I see as a flaw in the design of the search feature.
The only way around this I ahve found is to get google to search the site. Use your common sense to modify the bellow url, tested.
http://www.google.com/custom?domains=www.trap17.com
Check the option of what to search to "search www.trap17.com" Tip: try putting quotes(") around your search terms for more accurate results, as this will search for the keywords in the exact format presented apart from capitalisation eg: a search for "I love Saint_Michael" would onlt return results that contained the exact phrse "I love Saint_Michael", no matter whether it's in capitals.
Hope this helped

Yeah, I totally agree with you because many times I get so frustrated looking through so many forum topics to see if it's been posted already. I have to omit small words that are not allowed which make the search keywords vague and unhelpful. I've never even thought of using google as a search for looking through forums. Good idea and thanks!
The only disadvantage I would see is that google may not search all new topics imediately and will exclude them.

This post has been edited by squeaky: Oct 21 2006, 07:29 AM

This reminds me of other sites/programs search feature, where you enter a word that your sure will come up with the results you want and then are faced with an error. I know how frustrated you must get especially if you cant change the keywords as you will not get what you were looking for.

I agree that the search function for ipb is it's only downside, even the advance features and using wild card * nd the + or - signs in your words don't help. Best way to find out is google it. Their are not to many mods that can easily replace it the search function for ipb. Best Idea I can give members is use the google link keri gave and if you got the time browse the first 3 pages of that forum and see if your question does pop up.

I totally agree with keri-j on how IPB's search has a major weakness. But keep in mind that it does has one advantage over using the Google link: Google can take days or weeks to index the posts here, while th forum search feature will bring up anything, whether posted five seconds ago or five years ago (if Trap17 was around that long ).

I completley agree with you keri-j,

I think that someone -maybe all of trap17- should complain to the writers of IPB and ask them to change it to where the smallest amount of letters you can use in the search box. Lord knows, it would probably take the changing of maybe 2 lines of coding, and they could probably send it out with the rest of the screw-ups bug's that they are fixing with IPB 2.2 right now..