This is a test…

by
This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on December 30, 2005). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

…this is only a test.

Update: And it’s a test that worked — my favorite kind!

Last month, I added tag support to the site, courtesy of tags.app. While it’s been working quite well, I’d occasionally want to look for a tag that wasn’t displayed as a clickable link on whatever page I was on. I’d been getting around this by clicking on any tag to perform a search and then editing the URL in the browser’s address bar to get to the search I really wanted. Obviously, not a very user-friendly solution.

With a little simple form editing, things are much simpler now. In the sidebar there are now two search fields available. The first is the standard full-text search that comes standard with every Movable Type installation. The second (or the one at the top of this post, for that matter) ties into tags.app’s search capability, so you can now search for arbitrary tags. You can even search for tag intersections by entering multiple tags separated by spaces.

Quick, simple, and easy to use. Some days you’d almost think I knew what I was doing around here.

For the record, here’s the code I inserted just below the div that the standard search field lives in:

<div>
 <form method="get">mt-tags.cgi"&gt;
  " /&gt;
  <label for="tagsearch">Tag Search:<br />
   (Separate multiple tags with spaces)</label><br />


 </form>
</div>

iTunes “She’s Hot” by Sheep on Drugs from the album One for the Money (1997, 3:50).