Site suggestions

[cynical2]

A couple of convenience things that would be positive changes IMHO:

(1) Allow "Reply to All" on PMs...now, if you receive a PM with multiple recipients, you have to re-list everyone else on the distribution (other than the person whose PM you're replying to).
(2) When you do a search, if you have one word in the search string that is < 4 letters, the search returns an error. Instead, the short words should just be ignored and the search should still execute.

Both of these work the way I'm describing on other forums, so I would think that they both may be options in our forum software.

[Sonnie]

1. This sounds like a good suggestion, but it is not common in any forums I frequent. It is not a standard feature of vBulletin, therefore it must be a hack/add-on/modification of some sort if other forums have it. I will see if I can find out what it is.

2. We have 3 letter minimum and I have no problems searching for words with three letters. We actually had to jump through a few hoops to get our server setup for 3 letter word searches, but felt it necessary because of REW and BFD. I have changed this to 2... although it does create a much larger database when we do this. If it begins to be a problem we may have to increase it back. I did notice that AVS has changed their limit down to 2, it use to be 3.

Search Index Minimum Word Length
When using the vBulletin default search, this option limits the size of indexed words. The smaller this number is, the larger your search index, and conversely your database is going to be.

When using the Fulltext search, this option limits the size of words that may be searched for. Smaller words take longer to search for as they are more common. MySQL Fulltext has its own minimum word length as well that must be changed at the server level.

[cynical2]

Sonnie wrote:

1. This sounds like a good suggestion, but it is not common in any forums I frequent. It is not a standard feature of vBulletin, therefore it must be a hack/add-on/modification of some sort if other forums have it. I will see if I can find out what it is.

2. We have 3 letter minimum and I have no problems searching for words with three letters. We actually had to jump through a few hoops to get our server setup for 3 letter word searches, but felt it necessary because of REW and BFD. I have changed this to 2... although it does create a much larger database when we do this. If it begins to be a problem we may have to increase it back. I did notice that AVS has changed their limit down to 2, it use to be 3.

Sonnie, thanks for the change on #2! AVS was actually the other site I tested, and I actually thought they were ignoring short words...but as usual, you are correct! They simply allow 2 characters...I think the change is a big help!

On the other forum that I've received a PM with multiple recipients (AVS), it doesn't appear as a "normal" button at the bottom of a PM. Rather, it's just a link after the recipient list. So, that type of implementation would look something like this at the Shack:



I assumed this was a built-in capability, but looking at the implementation it's probably a custom add-on as you mentioned.

[Sonnie]

Yes... I found it and have installed it. I will test it out here shortly.

[cynical2]

Sonnie, you're awesome! Two suggestions and both implemented in the same day! Little things like this really make the site a great place to be.

[Sonnie]

We aim to please!