MySQL order by relevance

Question

I have a search form which searches a site content table to pull back appropriate results.

I want to search the title and content fields and pull back results in ord

Answer 1

mysql fulltext search is a good thing but it has a limit of minimum 4 characters word to be indexed. Al tough the limit can be changed but changing server variables isn't possible in all scenarios. In such a situation, I recommend the solution suggested in order by case

select 
    *
from
mytable a
WHERE
    (a.title like 'somthing%'
    OR a.title like '%somthing%'
    OR a.title like 'somthing%')
ORDER BY case
WHEN a.title LIKE 'somthing%' THEN 1
WHEN a.title LIKE '%somthing%' THEN 2
WHEN a.title LIKE '%somthing' THEN 3
ELSE 4 END;