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Octopress Search Error

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Problem

I used the search box in the navigation bar to search for pages in this blog.

</source> err1

It had been working well, but a month ago, the box searched for webpages other than those in this blog.

</source> err2

How to limit the search to pages within this site only?

Discussion

I read the generated HTML code for the search box, and compared the difference between a version of an HTML file in November, and another version in early October. However, I couldn’t find out the reason.

A temporary “fix”

Local re-generation and preview of site contents on *nix

I noticed that the custom search failed after I had uploaded a Git commit which had been written on M$ Win* 7.1 Therefore, when I was using my *nix desktop, I re-generated this site and previewed it.

temp_fix1

I saw that The search box worked fine this time.

temp_fix2

Then, I didn’t hesitate to deploy this site to GitHub Pages.2

Confirmed the “fix”

I browsed this blog on GitHub Pages to make sure that the problem had been “fixed”.

temp_fix3
temp_fix4

Failed to find the cause

I guessed that this was due to the difference between *nix and M$ Win*, after failing to find any clue from comparing the source code in different versions.

Problem appeared again

I generated this site again on M$ Win* since I had updated a page.3 4 Then the search box couldn’t limit the search to pages within this blog.

Repeating the “fix”

Three days ago, after pulling the recent commits from the remote repository of this blog on GitHub, I wrote another post on Ubuntu, and locally generated this site before publishing the post.5 Unluckily, the search box still failed to work.

Moreover, I couldn’t understand why the custom search failed in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, but worked in M$ Internet Explorer.

Solution

Fix the problem

I found the page Add a Search Box from the Columbia University. I followed the steps for limiting the search by site.6 Without the line <input type="hidden" name="as_dt" value="i"/> in source/_includes/navigation.html, the search box still work fine.

sol1
sol2

Test the fix

In the past, I used rake preview to detect any errors. As the number of posts and pages grew, this method has become inefficient.

While testing the instructions in this guide, I put the HTML code for the custom search box in an HTML file, and viewed the effects in Firefox. The URL variable ei was still there, but the custom search was restricted to this site only.

After solving this problem, I discovered another solution in the pull requests of Octopress.7

(Added on Dec 21, 2014)

Now, the problem has been fixed.8

  1. See commit befd4a7 on the source branch for details. ↩

  2. See commit 2e56754 on the master branch for details. ↩

  3. See commit 6ea49e8 on the source branch for details. ↩

  4. See commit 31c066a on the master branch for details. ↩

  5. See commit af4f216 on the source branch for details. ↩

  6. See commit 35955df on the source branch for details. ↩

  7. See Octopress issue 1681 for details. ↩

  8. See commit 514ed5e on the master branch of Octopress’s repository on GitHub. ↩

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