So Bobby:

At least on my Mac, IE web browser, searches come back generally in early-to-recent order, but sometimes not perfectly so. Is that just how it is? I haven't found a way to view by date, and switch from most recent at top to oldest at top, like you can in email apps. That normal, too?

I wish when I do a search by member name, I could also narrow it to posts created by that person. Current search results turn up every dang thread he or she posted in, not usually what I want.

Thank's for educating and humoring me, Bobby!

As for the date thing, I think that the results are returned by the date of the individual post that matched the search criteria, but the date that shows is the date of the final post in the topic. Or some variation on that. That's why they appear to be out of order.

It might be possible to delimit the search functions to just the forum from a URL and make that link come from most any page as a starting point.

There are a number of commercial, but reasonably low budget dedicated configurable. search engines available for DB's.