Forum Search Problem

I was looking at the latest posts and saw one in the Tomatoes forum that looked interesting. In reading that post there were several references to "EB" or "EBs." I wanted to know what that meant, so I went to "Search Forums" and input "EBs". Surprisingly I got no results whatsoever. I then input "EB" and also got no results. I then input each of them in lower case and still got no results. What is the problem?

I don't know what the problem is with the search, but EB is an Earthbox, it's a special kind of container that I don't know much about but people talk about them all the time on the Container Gardening forum--somehow there's something special about how they're designed that makes them really good for growing veggies and other stuff.
http://www.earthbox.com/

Thanks! I've never heard of them before. I took a look at the website and bookmarked it for later viewing.

Now I just need to find out why the search didn't work. LOL!!

You know, I just remembered something that might explain the problem--I think the words you search for have to have a minimum number of letters, maybe 3 or 4? I remember Terry or one of the other admins explaining this to someone else who'd been having trouble. I bet if you search for Earthbox (or Earth Box) instead you'll get a bunch of results.

ecrane3, you're exactly correct. There is a minimum of, I believe, 3 letters. This is a limitation of the database software that I'm using to store and search our forums...

I hate search. It's a perennial problem for me... I don't think I'll ever master the art of writing a search engine.

dave

Are you sure it's 3 letters, Dave? 'Cause my first search was for "EBs" which is 3 letters, and nothing came up even though I know there's at least one instance of it.

This message was edited May 9, 2007 7:35 PM

Sorry, I meant that words of up to 3 characters are ignored by the database program.

dave

Shoot! But I do understand. Most searches of 3 letters or less either give you way too many hits or take forever. Even 4 letters are sometimes troublesome.

One search engine I know of ignores words like "the", "and", "but", etc. and throws back a message stating the word is too common to be included in a search. Other unusual words or terms, like "EBs", are allowed. Don't know what their search engine looks like, though.

The backdoor way to do this is to use Google--here's what I got when I searched for EBs davesgarden.com
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=EBs+davesgarden.com

Yes, I know how to use google very well. However, I prefer to use DG's search engine when I'm in DG if I can.

You might try this one:
http://davesgarden.com/search.php