Well, here's the thing: To limit custom Google searches to just content from the root of this specific blog, I need to pass the string
inurl:0001111 (that's my Radio usernum) to the form handler on the Google end. I think I need to go back to web forms school, because I'm stymied. As I see it, there are two ways to do this:
- Add a hidden form element and pass the value that way
- Give the string above as the default value in the form field and tell users to ignore (but not delete) it.
The problem with the second approach is that it's ugly and more than likely the user will end up stomping on the default text.
Is there a third way? Is there some trick to tell custom Google "hey, this hidden value is one of the search terms"? Am I missing something (probably).
The resulting search page also reverts to offering a search of the root domain, so at best this is a half measure until I move my site over to radiofreeblogistan.com
categories: metablog
5:42:51 PM 
say what []
Aha! I asked the question about non-root level addresses in the Google search box code in the comments on John Robb's blog and Brian Buck supplied part of the answer:
I'm going to try this now. I think I'll replace the calendar with it. ... Hmm, it's a little trickier than I first thought. The sample code John supplies gives his domain URL twice. I'm not sure where to invoke thesite:blogs.salon.com inurl:0001111 rss
This will do a search on Radio Free Blogistan for the keyword rss.
P.S.: The google search operators page — I've got this bookmarked.
inurl value, but I'll play around with it and see if I can get it working. Right now I've got the sample search box offsite at http://memewatch.com/blogistan/search.html.
categories: metablog
4:39:40 PM say what []
Since Jrobb and dws and others have posted their form code, the strange decoding, unencoding, recoding behaviors of the Radio RSS Aggregator appear to have rendered my Delete button inoperable. Or is this just me?
categories: radioactive
12:00:36 PM say what []
John Robb posts the code for adding a Google search widget to your blog (or any site, really).
However, as I read it, it seems to work with entire domains (for example, jrobb.userland.com). Sites like this whose root address is a subdirectory of a root domain (this site's address is currently blogs.salon.com/0001111/) may not benefit from this approach. Unless I'm reading the code wrong, it appears that it can be used to search all of blogs.salon.com but not specifically my corner of it.
If I'm wrong about this or if there is a workaround, please tell me, as I would like to add search to this site.
11:54:13 AM say what []
