Say I want to see posts about the “Get Attribute” vop? I don't want to see every post that simply has “get” and “attribute” in it obviously, so AND does no good. I need to be able to search for a phrase, words in that exact order.

Normally, putting it in quotes works, but no matter the options selected, a search on “get attribute” returns many, many results, most of which DON'T contain the phrase “get attribute”.

Why doesn't the Houdini Forum search function work like normal forum search functions?

the forum software is terrible

I never use it - I use google
so in your example I'd search

get attribute houdini

I'll get sorted results from SideFX and odforce

You can also add site:www.sidefx.com (or any other site you like) to your search string on google. Then it will search that specific site only.

The search function on the forum here is an artifact from a land before time, indeed.