Adding Search to your Blog

This walkthrough goes over different ways that you can add search functionality to your Write.as blog. It will be updated with more details and methods as they come along.

Feel free to leave questions, feedback, and suggestions about other ways to implement search functionality into Write.as.


Search App

We have created a custom search app with Glitch that allows you to search your blog. All you need to do is remix the app on Glitch and add it to your Write.as blog using pinned posts and Custom JavaScript. To create a search app and add it to your blog, follow the instructions in the Glitch app.

Check out an example here.

Embedded Search Bar

DuckDuckGo has an embeddable search box that you can add to a dedicated search post of your blog. All you need to do is go here and create your DDG search box - be sure you add your Write.as blog url in the Site search field and change the Prefill. Once ready, copy the updated iframe, put it into the dedicated search post for your Write.as blog, and publish & pin the search post.

Check out an example here.

Tags

Write.as supports hashtags for posts. When you click on a hashtag, it will go to a page with a list of posts on your blog with that same hashtag (learn more here). What you can do is have a dedicated post that lists out the common hashtags you use in your blog. That way your readers can search your blog by topic rather than by words found in your posts.

Check out an example here.

4 Likes

@cjeller1592 so i’m attempting to replicate this locally on my writefreely instance, and i have python flask installed on the server already…

2 questions - well 3 - are there any specific flask depends to install for this to work?
what’s in the .env file so I can add that properly in?
and most importantly, may I copy this locally instead of using glitch? im trying to do things all locally for speed and ease of admininstration/later customization. i dont mind sticking your tag or some kind of attribution in it somewhere if you wish for that.

thanks !! :smiley: