Michael Lewis
#searchmysite redesign just launched thanks to its first major open source contributor: https://blog.searchmysite.net/posts/introducing-the-redesign-and-first-major-open-source-contributor/
Introducing the redesign and first major open source contributor

The searchmysite.net redesign has been launched, thanks to its first major open source contributor Lucas Gramajo.

Aug 19, 2023 at 9:14amWeb
Show threadAyush AgarwalAug 19, 2023

@michaellewis Hi, I'm sorry if I sound negative but I'd say that I preferred the older design.

It looks the redesign introduced icon fonts on the website which not only expects that the user will download those icon fonts (which is unnecessary), if the user blocks those icon fonts, the website appears "broken". I've attached an image that highlights this issue.

The change on font weights when hovering on elements also introduces subtle layout shifts on the website. I've attached a video recording that shows this issue.

The information density on a page also seems to have been reduced significantly. I don't remember how many hyperlinks per page were displayed in the older design but I have to click through multiple pages to see search results in this redesign. A lightweight text focused website doesn't really need pagination, in my opinion, until at least 50 or 100 search results on a single page are displayed.

Here's a fairly large blog post with over 23 thousand words on a single page written by @Seirdy. There's no pagination involved and the page opens without issues even on a slower internet connection.

https://seirdy.one/posts/2020/11/23/website-best-practices/

Of course, giving users a choice about how many search results they want in a single page might be a better option.

Best practices for inclusive textual websites

A lengthy guide to making simple, inclusive sites focused on content before form. Emphasizes brutalist design and accessibility to include under-represented users.

Seirdy’s Home
Show threadMichael LewisAug 20, 2023
@ayushnix Thanks for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback. I've logged the layout jumps as an issue, and an issue that there should be graceful degradation when fonts are not downloaded.
Show threadAyush AgarwalAug 21, 2023
@michaellewis Happy to help and to see feedback being considered!
Show threadMichael LewisAug 20, 2023
@ayushnix The information density feedback is an interesting one. It is something I've noticed with designer designed designs many times before, and put it down to a designer vs developer thing, hoping that the designers are more in tune with what the average user likes than developers are. There are exactly the same number of results in the new design as the old design though (10 for search and 12 for newest - see source at https://github.com/searchmysite/searchmysite.net/blob/main/src/web/content/dynamic/searchmysite/solr.py ) but you just have to scroll more.
searchmysite.net/src/web/content/dynamic/searchmysite/solr.py at main · searchmysite/searchmysite.net

searchmysite.net is an open source search engine and search as a service - searchmysite/searchmysite.net

GitHub
Show threadAyush AgarwalAug 21, 2023
@michaellewis I guess having to scroll more made me think that the original design had more results in a page. But yeah, even Google search seems to be more information dense right now (that information may not necessarily be useful) and that seems to be low bar to meet.
Show threadMichael LewisAug 20, 2023
@ayushnix Anyway, the new design has been set up so that, in theory, users could choose their skin/theme, like you could on some old sites in the early days, in which case I guess a "classic" option could be reintroduced if there was enough demand:-)
Show threadAyush AgarwalAug 21, 2023

@michaellewis An option to go back to the classic theme would really help.

The redesign may have been done with good intentions but I can’t help but feel that it has mostly made the experience worse than before by picking up web design practices that should be avoided on textual websites.

Show threadMinistry of Good IdeasMar 25, 2025

@michaellewis really cool! What engine are you using?

We tried indxing as well its crazy how much javascript there is making full text search without prerendering really hard

Show threadMichael LewisMar 25, 2025
@MinistryOfGoodIdeas Thanks for your feedback. I'm using Apache Solr as the search engine, and Scrapy for indexing (crawling). Scrapy doesn't execute JavaScript (although there are plugins like Playwright which will enable it to do so) but I've not found that an issue given searchmysite.net is mostly for blogs and most blogs are static sites.
Show threadMinistry of Good IdeasMar 25, 2025
@michaellewis ok so its based on lucene..
I worked together with the creator of ReIsearch on exodao.org.
He had a bit of a different approach to finding results in structure.