The forum software is a program that Forest continues to pay for (since the forum produces no revenue to pay for itself). And honestly, he is so busy with his career (not TMS-related) and with different TMS-related activities, that he simply does not have time to spend tweaking our software. For the most part, it works great, and it's really stable, which is a blessing.
The rest of of us who volunteer as admins don't have access to the deep XenForo settings - our "powers" are pretty much limited to managing posts and users.
I'm a self-taught techno-geek, starting in about 1988, and I learned a huge amount back in the day by simply clicking on stuff to see what happens. That's how I figured out the little trick to using our Search function - I saw the tab "results from our forum only" and thought - "What the heck? That might have something!"
~Jan