search needs 4 letters - really?

I thought so but as I wrote already I set it to 3 and still get in the front end: "Search term must be a minimum of 4 characters and a maximum of 200 characters.".

And I still wonder why the FC description in the back end says "Please note these reasons for some results not being included: - word is less than 4 characters (default for MySql DBs)...". So where does this "4 characters" come from?

This means that your DB limits to 4

the fact that you get results with 3 letter does not meant that the 3-letter words are used in the text search

new messaging will be more clear (you can see the new messaging in category view, it will be added to search view too)

Sorry but I still dont get this. When I use the Joomla Search I get:

"Search term must be a minimum of 3 characters and a maximum of 20 characters."

When I use the FC Search I get:
"Search term must be a minimum of 4 characters and a maximum of 200 characters."

So it CAN NOT be a restriction from the DB because Joomla is able to search for 3 letter words. How do I get FC to work with 3 letter words too?

Hello
see this FAQ article:

www.flexicontent.org/documentati ... ching.html

Thanks for the hint.

I still don't understand why the Joomla search detects a different number of chars than the FC search.

I was not able to find ft_min_word_len on my WAMPP in any file except for my-innodb-heavy-4G.ini but changing it there did not make any difference.

hede wrote: Thanks for the hint.

I still don't understand why the Joomla search detects a different number of chars than the FC search.

It is simply different, but if want to know:

-1- Joomla standard search view (which uses the Joomla content search plugin) uses:
LIKE %someword%
which allow any word size but is very slow in large sites

-2- FLEXIcontent advanced search view, uses MATCH-AGAINST which on a full indexed column which is fast in large sites, but it will ignore words smaller than ft_min_word_len

-3- Joomla Smart search view uses a custom CODE match which is even faster, allows small words,
-- but indexing is very slow on large sites,
-- the search DB tables tend to become very big
... using smart search in large site is not best option , flexicontent search view will do better, but in very larges site it maybe desirable to use other solutions ...

hede wrote: I was not able to find ft_min_word_len on my WAMPP in any file except for my-innodb-heavy-4G.ini but changing it there did not make any difference.

OK i have updated the FAQ article ...

After changing the value run in phpmyadmin
REPAIR TABLE ppp_flexicontent_items_ext
REPAIR TABLE ppp_flexicontent_advsearch_index

this will make the search indexes to recreated/updated