How to: Allow searching for short words in MediaWiki

By default, MySQL only searches for words of four characters or longer. If you want to index shorter words, like 3-letter words, do these steps:

Tell MediaWiki you're allowing shorter words

Add this to LocalSettings.php:

$wgDBminWordLen = 3

Add these lines to your /etc/my.conf

[mysqld]
ft_min_word_len=3

Then restart your MySQL. Now, recreate the search index with the command REPAIR TABLE searchindex;