Fixing Chrome's Search Feature for Instructables.com

Follow these simple steps, and with the use of a chrome extension, you can make the Instructables website searchable from your hotbar!

If you've used chrome, you may be used to the auto-search feature. By typing in a website, such as "instructables.com" and pressing tab, it will allow you to search the site, directly from your omnibar.

Unfortunately, this is set up to use the old 'tag' system, and thus leads to a broken page!

The solution I've found involves the powerful and lightweight extension "Redirector" found here

It allows you to edit the Url that your browser is connecting to using Regular Expressions. These are flexible ways to match and replace parts of a word or string of letters and numbers! see This helpful site

Once you've added the extension, find its options under chrome://extensions

You'll see a 'from' and 'to' field.

fill them respectively with

www.instructables\.com\/tag\/\?q=(.+?)&.*

and

www.instructables.com/howto/$1

These expressions are built to take google's mess, pull out your search terms, and hand it over to the actual instructables.com search function. Once you've got them typed in, be sure to hit the +ADD button.Add

Your search function for Instructables should now work!

There are plenty of other ways to use Redirector, especially if you hone your skills with Regular Expressions. I've used it before to prevent my own access to distracting sites, and automatically use simple proxy sites, but the limits are only your imagination! Furthermore, the extension itself is open source on github here so if you find there is a function you'd like (such as a on/off button, or an edit option) you can code it in!

Thanks for reading, if you have any questions, please leave a comment or shoot me a message!