Concerning Design and Stucture I prefer Blocs having its own. Hihi. Right @norm 
1 Like
I would think, Google CSE could be a Bric pretty easily in Blocs, perhaps.
Google CSE (Free) or Google GSS Enterprise Search (Paid)
• Programmable Search Engine by Google
• Context File | Programmable Search Engine | Google Developers
• Create a search engine - Programmable Search Engine Help
• Programmable Search Engine | Google Developers
• Overview | Programmable Search Engine | Google Developers
Here is an example Blocs site using Google CSE (see @ bottom of the main page)
http://bobmayer.com/ - by Jen Talty
However, I can’t seem to find her user profile on the Blocs forum anymore. I had previously replied to her posts but they also seem to be gone? Link of Blocs site seen here however.
There are others to be found as well, for example:
DuckDuckGo:
Yioop:
etc.,
So options exist, beyond paying $299 a month. 
Totally agree, however, I do like the thought of being able to control the styling on the results page.
Added the google field is trivial it’s just not a great experience as it takes you offsite, unless I’m missing somthing?
Well, free is free. Sometimes free overly exceeds expectations and many times paid fails to reach those same expectations.
Of course free has it’s limits, such as possible lack of config, branding etc. But hey, it is free. Swiftype at $299 a month mentioned above is always an option for example. Funny thing is, Swiftype actually used to be $19 a month by contrast early last year. That’s quite an amazing price hike by them since - huh? Almost 1500% 
By contrast take others like Algolia Search, as one example which offers Free + paid, and is a lot cheaper than Swiftype concerning the paid options.
Did you look at the sample site I linked to above that was done in Blocs. It uses a PopOver / iFrame to load the results on the site not offsite, that then link to the intended pages referenced. I would assume you could open the chosen link in the same window as well. Is that what you mean?
I also provided two links discussing Google CSE appearance / branding options and settings. The GSS paid version allows further brand customization as well of course.
There are some free pre-existing PHP/MySQL alternatives as well. However many look old and outdated (hence security). But perhaps most importantly they would be overly complex to deploy for the vast number of Blocs users whom wish to avoid code at all costs it seems. So from a setup and deployment standpoint probably not a feasible option in regards to most Blocs users due to that. Even something like Solr would likewise fit in this category.
Honestly a simple AJAX / JS / JSON Search, might be the best option for Blocs.
Here is a simple example of AJAX Live Search with simple PHP that searches an XML file. Which could perhaps be modified to work with Blocs sitemap file. However from what I see most people don’t name there Blocs pages or titles specific enough for that to work correctly. So a more realistic approach for this simple method might be creating an additional xml file from each pages stripped out relative data for the purpose of search when a site is exported. However that might cause unwanted duplicate content concerns for crawlers. But something certainly seems possible concerning this simple approach. You can find other examples like this as well.
Further along these same lines you can look at complete frameworks such as, Tipuesearch.js , Lunr.js , Elasticlunr.js , Etc., which all offer robust site search capabilities and options.
From the AJAX / JS / JSON , Etc., standpoint you would be free to allow full customization of styling as you desire, remain onsite, etc.
So perhaps this is the simplest and easiest approach for Blocs and a “Site Search Bric” for Blocs Users.
Blocs_User
2 Likes
Well put! I’ll come back to this on Monday and process it properly. Some gems here, thanks.
1 Like
@norm Tipuesearch.js I saw this js and I love it to be integrated with Blocs! Another powerful bric to be added on Blocs! Looking forward
1 Like
Hey @mackyangeles , been doing some reading on TipueSearch. Looks like a good potential match for Blocs so could be added in the future most like 2.5+.
Anyway I just wanted to mention it’s pretty easy to add this to a Blocs project now. You should be able to add the required field in a HTML widget, attach the tipuesearch.js to all your pages in page settings and then manually create your content json file for your site and also attach that after export.
Granted it’s not ideal, just wanted to make you aware it’s achievable as it may be a few months before I get round to adding it.
Hi @Norm, I tried integrating this already via HTML though it lacks customization hehe much better if Blocs can do it as Bric hehe
How do you mean it lacks customisation?
1 Like
I am still a SoftPress Freeway user, although I am gravitating toward Blocs at high speed right now, mainly because I want a RESPONSIVE site and I just can’t figure out how to EASILY do that in Freeway Pro 7. One of the biggest things preventing my jump to Blocs though is the present lack of an EASY means to add SITE SEARCH. My existing sites built in Freeway are NOT responsive, but I was able to implement Google Custom Search on them. You can see this on the top page of the following Japanese site, in the bottom left corner:
Type “alarm” as a search term and hit return. You will see results on a new page. Then hit your browser BACK button and note that they keyword you type is now gone, which is how it should be. (Having a keyword stuck inside a search field is rather unsightly in my opinion.) It took a bit of work, but I was able to get it working consistently in Mac, Windows and mobile browsers.
The only thing I don’t like is the fact I have it at the bottom left. I would rather have a magnifying glass icon at the right of my navigation bar, but Freeway’s CSS Menus action does not allow for search.
All said, if I move to Blocs, I would like to see a new “Navigation” block with a search icon at right that, when clicked, would either shift the menus to the left OR overlap them similar to how the Drupal site does it:
https://www.drupal.org/search/site/
Of course, it should not leave the search term stuck inside the field after you finish a search and return to the page from which you initiated search. And it would be nice if the text cursor was not stuck inside the field either. (Test the search field on my Japanese page linked above to see how that works.)
Search is a very important feature to me. I’ve used it for YEARS. Prior to Google Custom Search, I used Atomz (also free). When Atomz died, I switched to Google, which works well enough despite the ads. There just needs to be a drop-dead easy means of adding search in Blocs, without having to resort to loads of code. For truly, the Blocs motto is that you don’t need to fiddle with code to get on the web. And honestly, that’s what led me to SoftPress Freeway back in 1999. The ease of building a “responsive” site is now pulling me toward Blocs. Please pull me harder with a SITE SEARCH feature! 
Thanks.
WAH!!! Please include this on 2.4 I want to capability so badly 
Long due request hehe… I saw this and posted it here before, Tipue 404 is there anyway to add this function on Blocs App. I’m not a coder or developer just a designer so I don’t know how to implement this… haha. @Norm
I wish I had time to. Unfortunately I’ll be spending the next month just getting whats in 2.4 already working correctly.
For those whom don’t wish to implement it themselves or the other frameworks also mentioned above, the Free & Opensource - Tipuesearch, is now available as a $15 Custom Bric integrated into Blocs by @Lucas posted about here in its own thread.
1 Like
Hi,
I did a quick test and tutorial with/for TipueSearch a year ago.
I don’t want take light away from any custom bric but for those who want to add TipuSearch manually here’s the tutorial.
Cheers / Johny
1 Like
Beggars can’t be choosy. Then again this is $15, so we aren’t beggars and so I shall proceed to give my honest review of it.
It’s better than nothing. However, it’s not great. I tried searching for “head” on that DEMO site and it came up with no results, even though on the About page you will find the word “heading.” I also tried searching for “jaz” but no results appeared, even though the word jazzy appears on the top page.
This is very important. Why? Because I’ve been using site search for YEARS on my Freeway sites, and I can tell you that most people do not take time to type in complete words and sometimes they misspell too. But that’s not a problem for Google Custom Search (which is what I use now in my Freeway sites), nor was it an issue years ago when I used Atomz Search.
All said, if TipueSearch improves it’s search, I would consider it worth the asking price. Again, it is better than nothing, and it may serve some people well. But until it is intelligent enough to put 2-and-2 together and figure out that a search for “jaz” should should show all pages in the site where the word “jazzy” appears, it’s an incomplete search feature.
Thanks!
@Lucas has just released his amazing Search Bric as mentioned in this thread:
It takes care of everything so you don’t need to waste your time trying to integrate TipueSearch. Looks like a great time saver to me.
If you want search it’s a shortcut to get it into your Blocs site
1 Like
You appear to be talking about something different from the DEMO mentioned above, but you didn’t comment on how well the Search feature you suggest works. As I said, the DEMO page search above doesn’t work if you don’t spell the word precisely as is used in the site, which will limit the usefulness of the search. Does the alternative search you recommend do that?
Do you have a link to a DEMO for us to try ourselves?
Thanks.
Hi @JDW , you’re right it doesn’t 't seem to be able to search unless you write the full word.
I’ve never used this myself, it was just an old test to see how it could be implemented into Blocs.
And i agree, a site search should be able to search partially typed words.
Cheers
1 Like
Obviously @Lucas read the comments here when seeing he liked @pulsecms comment above.
It looks like his custom bric has since been updateed, implementing misspellings via the “tipuesearch_replace” for misspelled searches. I didn’t look to see if either is implemented but there is also “tipuesearch_stem” and the “wholeWords” boolean, along with various other options/features available via tipuesearch.
I would suggest you instead post your feedback and suggestions in that custom bric thread, if its something you are possibly interested in using or wish to see improved further in ways.
1 Like
Yep I noticed here on the comments about the replace feature that indeed was missing from my custom bric. Stemming will also be added in a future update.
1 Like