Manualy change Search type to MySQL Fulltext search, what next?

[hichew]

due to the large number of posts on my forum i need this queries manually in mysql command.

ALTER TABLE post ADD FULLTEXT INDEX (title,pagetext)
ALTER TABLE thread ADD FULLTEXT INDEX (title)

So i'm done.. what next?
should i turn off the vBulletin search engine?

Thank you

[Joseph]

When switching a forum to the fulltext search mode, you will want to consider emptying the indices that the default search engine built. These indices are not used by the fulltext search and consume a large portion of your database. You should be certain that you are going to permanently use the fulltext search before removing these indices since, generally, it takes a lot of time and server load to rebuild these indices. Another consideration is during any time that the fulltext option is enabled, these indices will not be updated by any new posts. Using fulltext search for an extended period of time will leave these indices stale and you may still wish to rebuild them.

You can also empty these indices in the Update Counters section of Maintenance.

You may want to optimize the postindex and word tables afterwards by going to the Repair / Optimize Tables section of Maintenance.

Im using fulltext search and that's some info that i can see from the help file.

[bmanz]

any help on enabling fulltext search on a large forum ?
my IE times out while its doing the switch

[Steve Machol]

You can try running these queries manually:

ALTER TABLE post ADD FULLTEXT INDEX (title,pagetext)
ALTER TABLE thread ADD FULLTEXT INDEX (title)

[obetyance]

Hi!

I'm just wondering, what is the difference between the two search type, Full text search mode and the vBulletin search engine??

PRO and CONS. Advantages and disadvantages. When to use it? Which one is best for my site?

Thanks!

[obetyance]

FOUND IT: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=246575

MySQL Fulltext vs. vB Search Types
You can use Boolean under vBulletin's builtin search as well.

Fulltext
Pros
Less PHP resources used because the indexing takes place in MySQL.
No need to maintain the postindex and word tables which can take up a lot of space.
Natural Language and Phrase searching is available.
Can Sort by relevancy for better results
Default search in vBulletin's latest versions.
Can support more searches per minute.
Searches can take better advantage of MySQL's query caching.

Cons
Less Flexible Indexing, especially on Shared Servers. Changing parameters requires shutting down MySQL, dropping indexes and rebuilding them.
Fewer control parameters within vBulletin.
Rigid Stopword list as an external file.

vBulletin Builtin Search
Pros
Not reliant on your MySQL version.
Can be easily manipulated in the Admin CP including adding words under the minimum character limit or changing that limit.

Cons
Resource heavy, especially building the index.
Indexing must be done before post is inserted to database and can result in errors on overwhelmed systems.
Search Results can cause database errors if there are too many hits.
Large tables must be maintained manually for proper usage.
No Natural Language or Phrase based searching.
Easy to bring down large boards with multiple searches.

[obetyance]

guys, I'm just wondering, where can we put this? what options file? the config.php???

You need to put the following four lines in an options file:
[mysqld]
ft_min_word_len=3

[myisamchk]
ft_min_word_len=3

Then restart MySQL and rebuild your fulltext indexes.

The change is that we use fulltext search on these sites now. There is less control over the search results and you can only deal with what MySQL returns.

[peterska2]

That requires root access to the server and access to edit my.cnf

If you do not have root access to the server or access to my.cnf or are unsure about what you are doing then you should contact your host.