bbPress’s search is horrible (also in WordPress).
There essentially is no advanced search at all.
I have a Super-Search plugin that I’ve never finished and may go back one day to look at it when I have some time.
http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/7600/supersearchwl4.png
Interesting. There any code from there you can release in the mean time? Pretty disappointed that bbPress has such poor search, but not surprising given how little information and documentation there is.
In defense of bbPress, I think they went without search for a long time intentionally. It was not even included in the stock template until recently. The intention was that you could use tags to find specific content, click a member’s name to get all the replies they made and topics they started, etc.
For topics with no replies, there is a default view for that (look at the home page of this forum, near the bottom, to see it.) For other views, you probably want the My Views plugin by _ck_.
https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/my-views/
http://bbshowcase.org/forums/
(look at the bottom right for all the views)
Eh don’t defend bbPress – it’s the same problem with WordPress. They’ve never had a good search because writing a good search is hard and takes time from other needed things.
I haven’t released the search because after working on it for a week it became so overly complex that debugging parts of it was taking way too much time. When that happens I get mad and then usually re-write things from scratch.
I think my biggest mistake was I tried to make the layout template-able, so you could move stuff around. That added way too much code and logic problems. And then there was the wordpress awareness, more code.
I might just make a simpler version of it. I may just copy some of the vbulletion search layout since it’s very logical. Maybe I’ll have something by the end of the coming weekend if I have enough time.
Much love, looking forward to it!
_ck_ – FWIW, I hate the vBulletin search layout. 
Also, _ck_ can’t you accomplish much of what you need without search in bbPress? I don’t miss it. If I am looking for something that I can’t find on a forum, even this one, I just use google site:bbpress.org/forums/ $whatever.
Chris, try dealing with a forum with hundreds of thousands of posts, with many poorly tagged topics – also, newbies won’t bother to look for previous topics with help on what they need unless it’s dead simple and familiar to find.
Google has no context awareness in it’s search, topic age, poster, etc. It also won’t have the newest posts from the past 24 hours or more.
One note: the big advantage (to me) of using a Google custom search engine is that it automatically adds textads so I can make a little revenue:
http://www.weddingbee.com/search/?cx=002282152532121065906%3Ar3acndkexqa&cof=FORID%3A10&q=tuxedo&sa.x=0&sa.y=0#1382
Just mentioning it, in case it’s possible to support textads as part of a search engine results page!
Since the results would be part of your page, you can add ads just like any other template.
I am making good progress re-organizing my old code and debugging some quirks despite it’s complexity and should have something for everyone to play with over the weekend.
I am pleased to announce I have a public alpha available for Super-Search and will post it later after they fix some weird bug with the SVN.
You can see try it out here:
http://bbshowcase.org/forums/search.php
Demo:
http://bbshowcase.org/forums/search.php?search=download+theme
Suggestions, feedback and bug reports encouraged.
Well I still don’t have SVN access but thanks to Sam you can at least grab the first version :
https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/super-search/
Do not use it on a very active site yet, there is no query cache.
