This is really angering me about this site...

[AerandiR]

The search engine wont let u search anything under 4 letters. WTF, i want to search for DRK AF and it wont let me. I want to search for Elvaan RSE and it wont let me. If i type those abbreviations out i get the noob threads explaining what they stand for. Now i have to sift thru hundreds of archived threads to find what i need. Kinda negates the whole "search" feature. Who came up with this bright idea?

[KamuroIshigami]

Sorry, it is a performance decision.

As stated before, this is a performance issue, has been languishing in the works for awhile.

The reason why a three letter word search is not allowed is because it nearly doubles to triples the size of the search index, slowing the server to an almost grinding halt during peak hours as people post. Each time someone post a message, the system needs to create the entries for the search engine. If we include letters which are three letters long, it will include WAAAY to many words and will slow the server down.

Until there is a performance fix, it has to be kept at four letters or above.

As lowering the limit to three letters will result in the archival of the following words that occur in EVERY post, thus making the search table VERY big:
the
her
his
are
has

By excluding the three letter words, it reduces the search index size significantly, speeding up the database. When the DevTeam finds a solution, we will implement it and restore the three letter search function. Sorry for the inconvience and we thank you for your understanding.

[AerandiR]

Good explanation. Thanks.

[Tidane]

I know this is a little old, but I believe it would be possible to exclude only certain terms from the search. I was messing around with some things at my site, and I was getting close, but my host is crazy and likes to screw with the database and alot of times delete everything, but I believe it wouldn't be to hard for your skilled minds.

If this has been corrected, sorry, las time I searched for AF DRK it said it was to small. I haven't seen a post saying that it has been fixed though.

[illusan]

I think i can add some fuel to this topic... I'm really annoyed by the load times of the site. I figure the guys at FFXIONLINE.com have held it down and optimized it to the best of their abilities, but they could try changing hosts or finding a server that is better. I'm not sure but is FFXIONLINE.com on a shared hosting server? That would cause it to slow down.. If the site had no images and was a text-heavy layout (which it pretty much is anyways) it should be faster...but maybe the server is slow.

[Angler]

FFXIOnline.com runs on a dedicated Pentium 4 (2 Ghz) machine with 1024mb of RAM running RedHat Linux. We're using the most reliable and trusted software in computing to deliver this site, so performance does suffer a bit because of that. However, we figure that in order for us to stay secure and deliver the best experience that we can to our users, we have to sacrifice some load time.

We're currently working on getting another server. We don't know when it will be up and part of the loop, but we hope that the site will be able to hold up until then.

Regards,
Angler

[illusan]

That's cool. Good to hear that.

[Lakario]

As a PHP programmer myself I can understand to some extent why you want to limit the search to 4 letters; however, because of the nature of FFXI there are many many acronyms used quite frequently, anywhere from RSE to RNG and thus there is a high demand for information based on these and people are more likely to search for them. Perhaps on other forums this would workl; however, here, it is in poor taste.

Rather than flaming your technique though I thought I'd suggest some quick fixes. Firstly, cange the minimum to something about 4 or so. Then modify the search routine to exclude words from a list such as "the", "and" "why", "but", etc. It shouldn't be difficult to do with a well-built regex or other handling filter. Sure, it'll take a bit of effort on your behalf, but in the end I think it will make a number of people happier.

Personally, I have the same complaint about the search engine and I think it needs to be fixed.

Cheers,
Lakario