Fulltext search, getting around minimum indexed size

[Spriggan]

I've got a small problem.

 

I'm using a fulltext boolean search for a site that's hosted, so I don't have access to the server so I can't change the settings manually, and I need a way to get around the minimum indexed size restriction that's the default for MySQL.  This is for an author's website and some of his character's names are only 3 letters long and people don't get any results when they search for those characters, so I don't need to circumvent the restriction for all cases only ones we want to.

 

I realize I could use a LIKE comparison, which I do use when searching page/article/blog titles, but I needed a way to rank results--plus the articles are fairly long too--so using LIKE for everything wouldn't work for what we wanted.

 

I'm using MySQL 4.1 (though I could upgrade to 5.0) at the moment.

 

Any ideas or am I out of luck?

[fenway]

You're stuck, unless you use a third-party solution or make your own index... you could ways check the keyword length and decide how to query as a workaround.

[Spriggan]

Thanks for the reply fenway.

 

Well since I have a list of words that need to be looked for I can add to the query that if one of those words pops up to do something different, add a LIKE or something, I was just hoping for something less messy--and a little easier.

 

Making my own index does peak my curiosity though, it might not be practical for what I need but it would still be interesting to read about, do you have any links or anything that would point me in the right direction for learning more?

[fenway]

Not a link per se, although I'm sure there are some... just that you can make your own column full of relevant keywords, and search that...

[Spriggan]

I see.

 

That might not be a bad idea since I could easily create one at the time content is submitted and before it gets placed in the database.

 

Thanks.