FreeFind | Add a Site Search Engine to your Website

http://www.freefind.com/

What I Learned

Looking around at a couple of blogs on the internet, I quickly discovered how my simple desire to add a site search engine to my site was going to be a lot more trouble than it was worth. Everyone kept commenting on how much time and energy it took to create one from scratch and to maintain it (and that's with tutorials!) All the threads seemed to heavily recommend using a professional site search engine provider. I checked out a few of the providers that had been mentioned in the blogs, but I wasn't sure I was sold on the idea. I wanted something that would fit as seamlessly as possible into my site, or at least allow my to customize to that extent.

Then I found FreeFind. Granted I haven't actually tried out many different providers, but this company seemed like the perfect match for my needs:

  • The reference to their company name is very sublte and dosn't distract from the header.
  • Their ad result links that list above your search results are not loud, and seem to be in good taste (which can be removed completly for a small fee).
  • And of course the greates feature, extreme flexiblity and full customization of the result page design. (including creating your own html template to use)
  • There are a ton of more customization features that I haven't even had time to go through yet, but it is loaded with good stuff.

How I Applied it to the Site

So, as you can probably tell, I signed up for a free account with FreeFind. I then used their html template upload to copy and paste my wireframe template for my side. There are few small bits of code you need to paste where you want the search results to display, but that's about it. You do, however need to make sure all of your url's include the full path (like http://website.com/images/picture.png, no /images/picture.png kind of thing) so their server can create the whole page. I also found that my server side includes didn't seem to come across, but that is probably because my include files of course are not on their server either. Just make sure that all the code you want is found pasted into the html template. Include the link ref to your external CSS style sheet and icon image and presto, your design is integrated (or rather I should say that their search engine has been integrated into your design). Nice results for a fast and convenient solution the site search engine headache.