Was the search query behavior always like this or did something change?
I feel like previously you could add "/all?q=keyword" to the end of the url and it would conduct a search with all features regardless of whether you set all discussions or tag page as your main page. Now (and maybe it has always been like this) if you set your main page as the all discussions page, the "/all?q=keyword" url still does the search, but the post titles aren't bold and the query isn't in the url in the address bar.
For an extension like my little hashtags extension, if you want the search to work after clicking a hashtag with both tags page set as default and/or all discussions set as default you have to use the /all url, otherwise if the tag page is set as default the search doesn't work - with that page set as default you must use /all...
Again, the search works no matter what if I use "/all?q=keyword" but you would think no matter how your main page is set, it could not only execute the search, but also keep the search query in the address bar and bold topic titles and all of that like it normally would.
Hopefully I'm somewhat making sense.
To test:
- Set a forum with tags as the main page. Use the /all?q=keyword url - it will work great
- Next set a forum with all discussions as the main page. Refresh the site. Use the /all?q=keyword url - the search will be successful... but just not look quite the same...
- And of course /?q= alone, without "all" won't work with the tags page as default but I already knew that..