How can I add a site search feature to a Jekyll Blog? - wordpress

I am looking into migrating my site from Wordpress to Jekyll and would like to maintain the ability to have full-text search for the site. The Wordpress search was fast, reliable, and nicely formatted to match the theme, and I haven't found a decent replacement.
There's a plugin solution that uses indextank, but I am not interested in tying my search through a commercial API with users ranking the search items, I just want something comparable to Wordpress search.
I've also looked into the google Ajax api, but I don't want a floating ajax search box on the site.
There's always google's search for the website, but I haven't found this to be as reliable. (I haven't tried this since I moved to wordpress a few years ago, so perhaps I'm mistaken).
Since all posts are available in plain-text, it seems like it should not be to difficult to create an index for searching them when the site is built, but I have not found a good solution. Any suggestions or examples?

Jekyll + lunr.js = powerful full-text search, using JavaScript in your browser, for your Jekyll static website

One option to investigate Google Custom Search.
You mention trying to use Google in the past, but I'm not sure if you mean the custom search box as described here. Posting this in case it helps.

https://github.com/flaptor/indextank-jquery

https://github.com/chinchang/super-search/
This requires no extra configuration. Just plug and play library that works on your jekyll blog's RSS feeds with neat on-page search UI.

Related

How to make manual corrections to Google Translated Content?

The following Google Webmaster Central Blog entry suggests that you can manually correct translations by Google translate for your own website, which go live immediately and are also shown to your visitors: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2012/05/now-you-can-polish-up-googles.html
Unfortunately this feature seems to be not online anymore. Does anyone know a similar solution to achieve these results?
We want to translate a WordPress WooCommerce website with a lot of products from English to Chinese and therefore have to decide if we want to translate everything manually or use automatic translation via Google translate. Since the automatic Google translation is much quicker we prefer that way but we want to correct the many incorrect translated terms.
In case there is no way to make manual corrections to the Google Translations we also thought about downloading the translated version and re-importing it into WooCommerce again to make the edits there.
The feature looks like it's available at http://translate.google.com/manager/website/

Creating a plugin that adds functionality to a theme

Divi is a wordpress theme https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/. It contains a video module https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/documentation/video/ that allows you to add the URL of your video and then view it on your website. Currently it supports Youtube, Vimeo, etc. however does not support Wistia. Without going into detail Wistia is the only option I can use, and therefore my aim is to create a plugin that adds this functionality. However I'm going into the unknown and want further direction. My first objective would be to look into the theme code and find out how the theme is adding this functionality for Youtube, Vimeo, etc. Exactly how would I find the code? And then why wouldn't this functionality have been added to begin with? Would they have just left it out, or would it be another reason that might be preventing me from adding the functionality?
Every single include/embed/attachment etc. that loads from an external source, into Your app is done trough the usage of an API which Your source provides.
You won't be able to find much in their code since this is probably being done trough some custom shortcodes or hooks. In both situations, this requires custom modifications from their developers in order for the Westia API to work with the DIVI builder.
In Your particular case, Westia do provide an API but if DIVI didn't include that yet, I presume that this is because of the fact that Westia is a Niche video hosting provider, not a public one like Youtube / Vimeo. Therefore, I think that You should contact their support for more information on that issue.
You can try to embed your desired wisita video trough a custom object of some kind.
So in this case, You can go trough this thread right here by Elegant themes, and after you get acquainted with the methods to do so, head over to WISTIA's embedding options page and find out what fits your site best.

What is the best way to enhance SEO of an iFrame of same domain?

My company's website runs through a PyroCMS install that was very expensive to build, but downright impossible to maintain. Also, it was built on a platform that did not use tags so the SEO of our blog is very poor.
I have built a replica of the blog on Wordpress and will be iframe-ing it into the Pyro install on the blog page. They are both hosted on the same server and the wordpress install is within the Pyro install.
My question is this: What do I need to do in order to enhance the SEO with the iFrame? Is there a better way to do this that I didn't think of? Basically, there are some good articles being written andI'd like the niche-ness of the topics to get move up on page rank.
Thoughts? Thanks.
~joe
It seems like you've got quite a bit on your plate with this website.
I recently (less then a month ago) signed up a client who's site is built on an equally difficult and very ancient platform. What we did is set up the blog as a page extension www.url.com/blog. The blog was on the WordPress platform and had all of our plugins added in as well (I can send you to a list of these if you would like). Doing it this way has multiple benefits of which the main are:
The blogs PR values is associated to the main index's authority.
Your index gets credit for all of the content being written on the blog.
The clients site I was telling you about, is already on page 2 for a few of their keywords (even though the site itself is no good). Obviously I would like to state that it isn't due to the blog that they are ranking, but it is a key feature as Google wants to see your site growing in pages with relevant, unique, shareable content.
Don't forget about social media and backlinks! Let me know if you have any other questions and please stay away from iFrames for many, many reasons...
Using iFrames will hinder your SEO efforts. Same goes for duplicate content (though dupe content may not apply in this case; I'd need more info). If I were you, I would not pursue this strategy.
I've seen iframed content get indexed as if it was really part of the page it was in, but yuor creating a massive battle for yourself.
One of the biggest issues of using iframes is that every page of your blog will look like it is on the same URL. Have a go. Move around the blog and check the address bar. No change.
This means people cannot bookmark, link to or return to a specific page on your blog. A really bad user experience as well as crippling your ability to acquire natural links to your blog pages.
There are further issues but that should be enough to mean do not use an iframe for a blog.
Answer: to enhance SEO for the iframe, don't use it.
Why do you feel you need an iframe in the first place. Is it to wrap the websites design around the blog. If that's the case, update the blogs template so it naturally looks like the rest of your website.
If it's because you don't like the domain the blog is on. Move it.

Adding a CMS (wordpress) to a website?

I have made a site using html, css and javascript and is only on my local machine and have not put it onto a server yet, but i was wondering if i could use a cms on this site like wordpress? The site is only 5 pages but i have done all the styling myself.
Would i just have to install wordpress to the server and add the files there maybe? Or is there a lot of changes needed to make this work?
I have very little knowledge of PHP but i am a quick learner if that counts for anything.
Thanks for help.
Simple answer: yes
More complicated answer: why?
If your site is only 5 pages, and you've custom designed and built your layout, then I'm not sure what WordPress will add for you.
That said, if you want to add a blog or the like, WP would certainly be nice to have.
If you want to go that route, you have a few options:
use WordPress for everything, using the 5 pages you made as 'pages' inside of WordPress. You'll have to modify what you built for that to some extent.
leave the 5 pages as-is but add WordPress 'next to it' and run the blog/cms content from there. It can look the same, or maybe you want it to look a bit different.
leave your 5-page site as-is, and use WordPress or another CMS product on a separate server. You can set it up as a subdomain and then either install your own, or leverage something like Posterous or Wordpress.com
The short answer to your question is:
it will take some effort, you won't be able to just drop the files and install wordpress and have everything work immediately. With some work, though, it is definitely possible.
If you've done the styling and you want to incorporate that into wordpress you'll have to go through the process of creating your own theme. http://themeshaper.com/2009/06/22/wordpress-themes-templates-tutorial/ Try this site to see what that requires. Alternatively, google "creating your own wordpress theme" or something similar.
It will require some extensive PHP work, but a lot of these tutorials have already done that heavy lifting for you. In any case, it will be worth it for your to pick up some PHP skills, enough to follow along the tutorials.
I had to do this myself and what you can do is integrate your design into an existing design. You could just create your own theme, which takes some time but it is the correct way to do it.
http://yoast.com/wordpress-theme-anatomy/
I knew 0 php and I was able to create my own theme in a few hours. Best of luck.
I'm not sure what you mean "add the files there", I assume you means that use a WordPress-based website to display your site, then you can simple create a page by WordPress and then link this page to your site.
But if you means to create a wordpress theme which based on your existing site, then you can search a tutorial and follow it to create a wordpress theme by yourself. Making a wordpress theme will needs some PHP work, but not complicate, wordpress has very detailed documations and API.
I would suggest using the Umbraco CMS for it. The advantage is that you start with an empty site, add your css, js, and create your own content types, paste in your HTML for the templates, and you're ready to go. It is a perfect CMS for few page sites to larger sites and also has a great community around it, including lots of documentation and screencasts. Templating is done with the Razor syntax, very easy to learn and lots of documentation. You'll need to have a Microsoft-based server to host it and this may be a barrier depending on your hosting scenario.

Assume that WordPress is an almost-there CMS. What Plugins would you add to the 'core' to make it equal to "Real" CMSes?

It's obviously a matter of some controversy as to whether WordPress is a CMS, but like it or not, it's an extremely popular platform.
Assume for a moment that it's an almost-there CMS.
What plugins would you add to the package to bring it over the threshold? ie, if you were designing a "WordPress CMS core", what plugins would you add?
Check out http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/powerful-cms-using-wordpress.html. It has a lot of great tips and resources for makeing WordPress a CMS.
FYI WordPress 3.0 is coming out very soon, (it's in beta) and it adds a lot of API for adding custom post types (akin to Drupal nodes). You can actually do it already in WP 2.9, but 3.0 makes it easier to do.
Beyond that, what do you need to make it a CMS? Pages are quite flexible if you use templates. The answer to your question depends a lot on what you want to do in particular.
I recently did a Page-only site (no "posts" section) using just the PageMash plugin. PageMash lets you organize your pages easily (put them in order), and it lets you hide certain pages. So I set the "posts" page to a particular page and then hid that page via PageMash. Create all the pages you like and organize them at will. Works nicely.
Actually you don't need any plugins to use Wordpress as CMS. But I used the following plugins when I built CMS, they were specific for my site:
qtranslate, cforms and exclude pages.
Since you probably use a lot of regular pages on "CMS" web sites I always install
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cms-tree-page-view/
I am the one who created it, but it's true that I always install it and often I feel that I could not manage a site without it.

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