# Configuring MediaWiki to Search for Three Letter Words

By default [MediaWiki](http://www.mediawiki.org) uses [MySQL](http://www.mysql.com/) and the default <span class="caps">FULLTEXT</span> indexing uses built-in stop words and a minimum word length of four. A list of the stop words is available but are the usual thing (*the*, *and*, *one\_, etc.). You can set your own stop words by setting the **ft\_stopword\_file** system variable but the default stop words may be sufficient to your purposes. However, there are many three letter words which you may like to index (\_SVN*, *<span class="caps">RSS</span>*, *<span class="caps">FAQ</span>*, etc.). In order to do this you need to change the <span class="caps">FULLTEXT</span> indexing to a minimum word length of three. To do this edit the my.ini and add to the end of the \[mysqld\] section:

```
ft_min_word_len=3[myisamchk]ft_min_word_len=3
```

Restart MySQL, and then reindex the relevant tables. The tables are ${mw\_}searchindex where ${mw\_} is the table prefix for the MediaWiki instance (there will be one searchindex table for each instance). To reindex the table, log into the server and start up [MySQL Administrator](http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/administrator/). Log in as root and click *Catalogs*, then *wikidb*. Select the table and click the **Maintenance** button. Select *Repair Tables* and press **Next**. Check the *Quick* option under *Repair Method* and click **Repair Tables**. Repeat for each MediaWiki instance.