Is there a way to search for a member by their real name or location?

By real name, no, because you don't have to give that to join.

By location, maybe, but in the memberlist you can sort by location and then you have to go through the pages. It works better on forums that don't have ten million members

And when sorting by location, it depends on how they entered their location. For example, a CC'er in Zionsville, IN comes up on the very last page in the Z's .... she won't be listed in the "Indiana" section.

While it would be nice to have a standardized system of entering the info for searching capabilities (i.e. State, City such as "Indiana, Zionsville"), there are many CC'ers who choose not to enter this info and I've seen cute ones like "Location: At my computer reading CC!". I wouldn't want to take that option away from those who choose to keep their locations private.