Search couldn't be completed, too long, too short ...

[JoesfAidan]

I believe the search function needs to be modified, I was trying to search "from ego to iam" and all I can get is: the search could not be completed because the search keywords were too short, too long, or too common.

I cannot verify whether this has already been request before for the same reason.

 

[beardedeldridge]

Yeah the search function isn’t a fan of searching for Dee lol. I don’t really care to have it changed but always makes me laugh.

 

[Yazata]

the search could not be completed because the search keywords were too short, too long, or too common

Might help to include the name of the author and search only for titles of threads.

 

[ewiz]

It's been my experience with other forums that a minimum search length of 3 characters is common, and is the default with phpBB. This forum software, XenForo, has a default of 4. Meaning anything 3 characters or less won't return results like you're seeing. For words that are too common, that has to do with a certain threshold that once crossed flags that word so it won't return results. In both of these cases, changing these limits will increase the size of the search index files, and can potentially make searches take longer. Going from 4 to 3 for minimum character length probably won't cause any noticeable difference, but going from 4 to 1 almost certainly would. I think that the percentage for the common words threshold has a pretty negligible effect, going from something like 5% to 25% for example.

I'm not bothered by the limits personally, and just think you might have to get a little more creative with what you search for, and maybe expect to spend a little time digging. Just posted some tech info because it could be done and shouldn't cause any issue, but probably doesn't need to be done.

 

[JoesfAidan]

Might help to include the name of the author and search only for titles of threads.

Doesn't work too.

It's been my experience with other forums that a minimum search length of 3 characters is common, and is the default with phpBB. This forum software, XenForo, has a default of 4. Meaning anything 3 characters or less won't return results like you're seeing. For words that are too common, that has to do with a certain threshold that once crossed flags that word so it won't return results. In both of these cases, changing these limits will increase the size of the search index files, and can potentially make searches take longer. Going from 4 to 3 for minimum character length probably won't cause any noticeable difference, but going from 4 to 1 almost certainly would. I think that the percentage for the common words threshold has a pretty negligible effect, going from something like 5% to 25% for example.

I'm not bothered by the limits personally, and just think you might have to get a little more creative with what you search for, and maybe expect to spend a little time digging. Just posted some tech info because it could be done and shouldn't cause any issue, but probably doesn't need to be done.

It's not the first time I use XenForo, I am familiar with the search function but for some reason WF has limited search functionalities.

For now I am using google dorks, if anyone is interested:
site:wizardforums.com + intext:astral projection
site:wizardforums.com + intext:search keyword

 

[ewiz]

Doesn't work too.


It's not the first time I use XenForo, I am familiar with the search function but for some reason WF has limited search functionalities.

For now I am using google dorks, if anyone is interested:
site:wizardforums.com + intext:astral projection
site:wizardforums.com + intext:search keyword

The site seems to be working as expected with the default settings.

Also your search formatting isn't correct. You should just use "site:wizardforums.com keyword"

 

[JoesfAidan]

Also your search formatting isn't correct. You should just use "site:wizardforums.com keyword"

Format is correct, these are advanced queries, site, intitle, intext, inurl, you could use multiple ones in one go.

default settings

The default settings are not very practical:

 

[SkullTraill]

It's not the first time I use XenForo

If that’s true then you would know that the XenForo defaults are based on MySQL’s sensible defaults for common words and minimum word length.

Of course it can be changed in MySQL settings but the potential performance hit from that is not worth it.

Most large forums use ElasticSearch but a vector based search is expensive and not suitable for WFs current income.

The simple solution is to use double quotes e.g. “search term” which works perfectly for your use case because you are not looking for the common words in isolation but rather that phrase as a whole.

 

[Aeternus]

Doesn't work too.


It's not the first time I use XenForo, I am familiar with the search function but for some reason WF has limited search functionalities.

For now I am using google dorks, if anyone is interested:
site:wizardforums.com + intext:astral projection
site:wizardforums.com + intext:search keyword

As @ewiz put it, you need to exclude the intext operator as this is not how you perform a Google Search for specific website content. You should use "site:wizardforums.com from ego to iam.

The problem here is that even when using site-specific content search on Google, it doesn't return anything related from ego to iam, other than a sleep paralysis thread which doesn't have anything to do with the "from ego to iam" thing you are mentioning. I also tried to capitalize the words in the search menu in advanced settings section search for everything and I got the "No results found" message appearing on the screen before disappearing.

This means that there is no "from ego to iam" on the forums

 

[JoesfAidan]

If that’s true then you would know that the XenForo defaults are based on MySQL’s sensible defaults for common words and minimum word length.

Of course it can be changed in MySQL settings but the potential performance hit from that is not worth it.

Most large forums use ElasticSearch but a vector based search is expensive and not suitable for WFs current income.

The simple solution is to use double quotes e.g. “search term” which works perfectly for your use case because you are not looking for the common words in isolation but rather that phrase as a whole.

I tried double quotes but still no luck, an update to allow double quotes search would be awesome.

As @ewiz put it, you need to exclude the intext operator as this is not how you perform a Google Search for specific website content. You should use "site:wizardforums.com from ego to iam.

intext specifically asks google to return pages of the site that contain the keywords, as explained earlier you could combine multiple queries, there is nothing wrong with @ewiz's or my form, it's just different use cases, I prefer accuracy so I used intext.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

A moment's pity for all the fans of the band 'The The'. Or even 'The Who'

I guess my search-fu must be strong - I didn't even think about short words... although I have noticed that lots of search places on the net don't seem to let you use ""

 

[SkullTraill]

I tried double quotes but still no luck, an update to allow double quotes search would be awesome.

Wow, it works on mobile but not on desktop... that's so obnoxious. Might be some special character stripping that goes on on the desktop website due to XSS concerns or something... I'll look into it, but it's unlikely to be resolved as I am not looking at making major code-related changes at the moment.

 

[ewiz]

Format is correct, these are advanced queries, site, intitle, intext, inurl, you could use multiple ones in one go.


The default settings are not very practical:

Testing the intext: operator multiple times yields zero or next to zero results, when excluding it yields dozens or hundreds of pages with the search terms in the text. I wouldn't waste time expecting it to do anything. And using + hasn't done anything for 15 years, it was explicitly removed in 2011. Google's current documentation does not list either of these, or any other you mention except for site:, as a supported search operator.

 

[Aeternus]

I tried double quotes but still no luck, an update to allow double quotes search would be awesome.

intext specifically asks google to return pages of the site that contain the keywords, as explained earlier you could combine multiple queries, there is nothing wrong with @ewiz's or my form, it's just different use cases, I prefer accuracy so I used intext.

Well, I think attaching a screenshot is better in this case so, here goes:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Except for your topic in which you discussed "from ego to iam" there is that thread from 2025 about sleep paralysis. Other things are not found.

This can only mean one thing imo: the words "from nothing to iam" do not return anything relevant as there is no book related to it (I suppose you want to know if a book was posted or not).

Using the intext operator won't return anything useful:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[JoesfAidan]

Well, I think attaching a screenshot is better in this case so, here goes:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Except for your topic in which you discussed "from ego to iam" there is that thread from 2025 about sleep paralysis. Other things are not found.

This can only mean one thing imo: the words "from nothing to iam" do not return anything relevant as there is no book related to it (I suppose you want to know if a book was posted or not).

Using the intext operator won't return anything useful:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Thanks for confirming, I've just tested and it looks like google behaves differently on Desktop, both queries don't show this thread in the search result, however, I can confirm, not using intext operator for other searches yields way better result, I wouldn't advise using intext at this point.

 

[Aeternus]

Thanks for confirming, I've just tested and it looks like google behaves differently on Desktop, both queries don't show this thread in the search result, however, I can confirm, not using intext operator for other searches yields way better result, I wouldn't advise using intext at this point.

You're welcome! The thing is that indexing may take a while from Google, and depending on the country you live in / timezone, they may be displayed more later than intended.

So... I think this reaches the conclusion that the book that has the title "from ego to iam" doesn't exist. Rather... the phrase "from ego to iam" written on Google, without any double quotes ofc, shows a YouTube channel going by the handle of From Ego to I AM.

 

[ewiz]

Sidenote, taking a look at what this From Ego to I Am product is, it honestly looks like the sort of money-grab nonsense you'll find targeting normies all the time, now with AI slop videos, so cool . There are easily hundreds or thousands of better materials actually posted on this forum, probably including a bunch of the low-effort AI generated books that get posted all the time. Life is short, please don't put effort into some trash like this (even if it were free.)

Wow, it works on mobile but not on desktop... that's so obnoxious. Might be some special character stripping that goes on on the desktop website due to XSS concerns or something... I'll look into it, but it's unlikely to be resolved as I am not looking at making major code-related changes at the moment.

Phrase searching works fine for me on mobile and desktop. It just doesn't work on either if the keywords are too short or too common regardless of the quotation marks. I don't think there is an issue.

It's possible, if someone uses iOS/macOS or a particular browser, that the "" symbol might be a curly quote and not a straight quote mark, and in that case the software may not recognize it. But that seems like a rare possibility, not a problem worth worrying about server side.