I always go to Advanced Search so I can refine my search. But if I just put keywords in the box does it search all the fora for all time? Does it search for username? The preset you’ve got already in Advanced? Some default thingy?
The lazy want to know.
I did a little experimenting just now (sorry, hamsters!), and from what I can tell, it looks like just a generic search: all fora, any date, sorted by last posting date. Changing the preferences in the Advanced search had no effect.
I had been wondering about this myself, and tried it a few days ago, with the same results as Q.E.D.
It made be wonder if it might not be easier on the hamsters to set the default for this as one or two weeks, rather than “any date,” if such a thing can be done in vBulletin.
If I do a search on my name to check threads I’ve been involved in, I always use the “Advanced” feature to limit it to the last week or so. It would be a lot more convenient if one could do this from the drop-down box.
FWIW, the HTML underlying that search button bears it out. It brings up the search.php page with the field you type into transmitted as “query”, and two hidden fields - “do” = “process” and “showposts” = 0. It also sends the submit button, of course, but its value doen’t seem to be meaningful. “query” corresponds to the “Keywords” field on the full search page, the “do” argument seems to tell the search.php script to actually execute a search, rather than bringing up the search page, and the “showposts” setting corresponds to the “show results as threads” radio button. No other qualification is sent.