upgraded from Cutenews 1.4.6 to 2.1.2 Search not working now

Further to my earlier post on getting HTML tags I now need to get my Cutenews Search working. The system was detecting that I was using the full URL but that is not so. Well at least I can't find any. All links are local.  Progress so far is that the search result is too short. Code from search.php:

Cutenews search not working

Temporary remove the check on full URL

// Check including isolate check?
// check_direct_including('search.php');

works but another issue is the search is rejected as being too short.  The setting is to less than 3. my search reqest was more than 3 chars, so don't know what's happening

    if (strlen($search) < 3)
    {
        echo "<div>Too short request!</div>";
    }
    else
    {
        $block = '';
        $found = 0;

        do
        {
            reset($news);

            // repeat, while data exists

UPDATE 24TH JUNE  I also inserted "var_dump ($_SERVER);"  and the item entered into the Search box was in search.php. Something is amiss with search.php