So my shade tree databasin' didn't work as I had hoped. I thought I could build that custom index offline on a copy of the database and then put that in place on the main database.
Nope.
There are five tables that the search function uses so I backed up the ones already in place here, cleared the data out of them, and loaded them with the data from the copy. There's more data in those tables than was there before....but in the Search part of admin where you tell it what kind of search, custom or full text index, it says the custom index still needs to be built.
I resumed the custom build just to see where it was and it was less than 50% and I stopped it. Building this index is what crashed the board and I'm not even trying that again. If I took the site offline for four days and let it build, it would probably finish.
But having the site down to improve the search function doesn't seem worth it. So....that's about it for this one.
I'll build the custom index over on the archive version of the board and if you really really need to find something, it's the full database and you'll be able to search it differently than you can this one.