Fiddling with this to make it search, then fiddling with this to get it in the template somehow, somewhere.
Improved site search with Google and Manila.
For quite a while, I've used Google as a search tool for this site - see the navigation bar on the right. I'm not using the SOAP service, but rather just customizing the parameters by restricting it to this site. Today, I've improved it somewhat. Because "Manila" has a number of different urls that represent the same message, e.g. mode=day, and mode=topic, I changed the code to eliminate the word mode in the url, using -inurl:mode
The resultant search box code is (more or less):
<FORM name=googleForm onsubmit="document.googleForm.q.value+=' site:instructionalTechnology.editThisPage.com -inurl:mode'" action=http://www.google.com/search method=get>
<INPUT size=10 name=q>
<BR>
<INPUT type=submit value=SiT>
</FORM>
Just as a quick comparison, compare these two searches for the word: "blackboard":
BEFORE: blackboard site:instructionalTechnology.editThisPage.com
AFTER: blackboard site:instructionalTechnology.editThisPage.com -inurl:mode
This does remove a lot of duplication, I think. There are other url components, that I should also consider removing, e.g. viewDepartment or perhaps requiring, e.g. inurl:msgreader which would eliminate archive pages of the form /2001/02/02 and department pages which are compilations of existing posts. That will essentially enable each page to come back as an individualized result.
Hmm... let's try it and see. I've also added inurl:msgreader and the results are pretty good I think.
MORE AFTER: blackboard site:instructionalTechnology.editThisPage.com -inurl:mode inurl:msgreader
[Serious Instructional Technology]
