XF 2.1 How to use Search?

[Mikethemix]

Is there a standard help text I can use to explain "How to use Search" for my users?
For example:

• Does XF2 support boolean search?
• What are the standard search expressions?
• Are there example of searches including AND, OR and NOT?
• Does it support wildcards? What are they?

I can't find anything in the manual or on this forum...

Many thanks,
Mike

 

[Mave]

Did you look into Enhanced Search yet?

XenForo Enhanced Search

xenforo.com

 

[Mikethemix]

Many thanks for the suggestion, yes we looked into that a few weeks ago, however that seems to require elastic search which our hosting provider tells us cannot be installed on our shared server.
The standard search seems to do a very good job anyway, I just want to know how to help our members to use it. Any tips?

 

[Mikethemix]

Hi guys, does anyone use the standard search? Has anyone written up example of search arguments?

 

[Lukas W.]

Hi guys, does anyone use the standard search? Has anyone written up example of search arguments?

There's no search arguments for the basic MySQL search. It's just keywords. Any additional options/filters have to be performed via the advanced search form.

 

[Mikethemix]

Thanks for that.
However, this is what I've discovered from trial and error using the basic search:

• search for alpha beta gamma finds posts that have all three words, in any order
• search for "alpha beta gamma" finds that exact phrase
• search for alph* finds any words beginning alph (ie * is a wildcard)
• search with three or less characters fail
• search ignores punctuation marks, treating the characters before and after the punctuation as separate words.

Are there any other search tricks I can learn from you guys? I am the amateur here