XF 1.4 Forum member search vs admin member search

Mr Lucky

Well-known member
On my forum, when I serach in the front end for "Chris" I get only 4 results, whereas in the admin user search for "Chris" I get 33 hits.

Why would this be?
 
What do you mean by front end "Search"? There is only the user name auto completion which differs from searching for users with "Chris" in their name in the ACP (presence vs prefix, banned/unconfirmed and most specifically, only users active fairly recently).
 
I mean the front of the forum, when you click on the members tab, there is a search filed in the sidebar Find a member. This brings only 4 results as opposed to 33 in ACP for Users. Or are Members different to Users?

The same applies to the auto completion. There is a member called Chris37, who shows up in the ACP User search, but if I want to PC him, then his name doesn't show in the auto complete or Find a Member (so I can get to his profile and click on Start Conversation)
 
Note that it's just auto complete that gets disabled. The user is still accessible (subject to other constraints).

All of the conditions I mentioned above are applied with the auto complete look up in the front-end. It would be one of those (most likely the user state not being valid or the user not being active within the last 6 months).
 
Note that it's just auto complete that gets disabled. The user is still accessible (subject to other constraints).

All of the conditions I mentioned above are applied with the auto complete look up in the front-end. It would be one of those (most likely the user state not being valid or the user not being active within the last 6 months).

I'm not quite getting this. So how would one member find another, given that they don't have access to the ACP.

For example they know that years ago there was a Chris something or other but can't quite remember his name. Surely it would be useful for that member to find Chris37, even though Chris37 hadn't posted for a while?

In other words, why can't members be able to do the same kind of search an admin can? Or will this work if I buy the enhanced search?
 
The only time a user is not listed is if their account is not valid (banned, non-valid user state) or if they haven't visited the forum in an extended period (6 months); this is different from not posting. This is simply to make the results more relevant in the vast majority of cases.
 
But this means in some cases a member will not be able to find another member at all if the person they are trying to find has not visited the forum for 6 months.

Is the solution for me to but Enhanced Search?
 
No, this would need to be changed directly in the code. I believe this is really the first comment I've seen about it.

The fact that you have ~33 members starting with "Chris" shows a good example of why the feature was setup. Chances are, the one I'm after is the one that has actually visited the forum. Having so many other users means that there's a good chance that the unrelated ones would show up and actually hide the one I'm after (as the auto-complete matches 10 people at most).
 
The fact that you have ~33 members starting with "Chris" shows a good example of why the feature was setup. Chances are, the one I'm after is the one that has actually visited the forum. Having so many other users means that there's a good chance that the unrelated ones would show up and actually hide the one I'm after (as the auto-complete matches 10 people at most).

It's not so much the autocomplete limit, which I think is probably fine, but the fact you can't find that member at all.

Here is the scenario. Chris37 used to post years ago and he was a very good graphic designer. But he stopped posting three years ago. Somebody wants to contact him because they remembered he did good stuff and they want a logo designed. But they can't remember if he was Chris 47, Chris93 or what. So they search for all members called Chris.

I appreciate I am the only person who has asked about this, but surely such a search would be useful and expected in a modern forum software.
 
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