Search Facilities in the Forum

Community
1

Can we please move off Google for search?

No results found.

Can’t find what you’re looking for? Perhaps start a new topic? Or try searching with Google instead:

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We’re not exactly “on” google for search, but a “try with google” suggestion pops up when a local search fails. I agree it would be nice to remove that.

Previous thread found on how a forum admin can achieve it: Removing Search with Google - support - Discourse Meta The suggestion there is:

… editing the text content and CSS. The class for the form is google-search-form, the text content can be found by searching for “try searching with google” in Admin→Customize→Text content,
… write a new theme component with this CSS, and add it to every selectable theme on the forum.

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Thanks for identifying the solution.

(Ive just realised that Ive never edited CSS in my life - thats a weird realisation!)

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Pinging @how on this solution.

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I changed it on all themes. Can someone confirm it also works on the Dark theme, or should I add the CSS as well there?

/* Remove Gaggle search */
body.search-page .google-search-form { display: none; }

image
image1090×90 8.2 KB

It would be nice if we could choose the search engine ourselves.

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Much obliged.

I shall keep in the back of my mind the aspects regarding choosing a dedicated search engine.
I assume it would necessitate a Discourse plugin?

I expect the move towards this forum interoperating with the Fediverse will complicate such an approach,… but one step at a time, eh?

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Thank you @how, it works fine!

You might post about this on meta.discourse.org … who knows an easy way to achieve that already exists, or someone will create it.

For sake of completeness of the solution:

2 labels need to be changed as well:

  • js.search.search_google
  • js.search.or_search_google
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'Gaggle' settings updated
'Gaggle' settings updated1090×207 15 KB

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9

I had a scan in the site and found an example for Duckduckgo which looked easy enough as a point of introducing an alternative.
However, from what I understand that would equally be an imperfect solution too.

I must admit resenting that I havent built a search portal for some time.
Id love to do something with a dedicated Marginalia instance at some point (around 16GB of RAM and 2TB data should do it)

That would be a good way of scooping up all SH/Fediverse content effectively and remaining closer to FOSS/community tech stacks.

… time is a vicious thing.

1 Like