search function does NOT include similar characters like "á" and "a"
Fragment of a discussion from Project:Support desk
Yes, the default MW search engine is notoriously limited I'm afraid. Another oversight in search results occurs when a word is preceded by a quotation mark. For any extra functionality, you might be able to do two things:
- (1) Install a search engine such as Lucene or Sphinx, as Subfader already suggested, and an appropriate MW extension (for a list see my user page). Unfortunately, this may not be an option for the average user, because it requires shell access. If you're on a shared host, you're probably out of luck, but contacting your hosting company can do no harm.
- (2) use an external search engine such as Google. One serious downside to this strategy is that it may be slow on updates.
See also Search (though it rather shows how much things have remained still).
Of course, you can always redirect "Ernesto Fama" to "Ernesto Famá".
Cavila MW 1.17, MySQL 5.5.16, Php 5.3.8
