Ever wanted your search engine? Well, it would be a lot of work to have your own. But you can have multiple search engine’s on your website.
Networking guru and YouTube sensation Network Chuck released a demo video in 2022 that showed viewers how to set it up.
In order to get a detailed view of how to set up such a thing, I highly encourage watching his tutorial. It took me less than an hour to get it right (more on that later).
Essentially, I created an instance of Linux using a cloud service and ensured the latest updates were installed – mainly for security purposes. I then went to my web host’s settings to construct a subdomain (e.g. bob.bobswebsite.com). Next, I installed a metasearch engine called SearXNG (details on Github) using Docker. SearXNG was allowed to run in the background as a daemon.
As shown above, the website was able to load most times. The SearXNG site would disappear when occasionally refreshed. I later realized that I didn’t update all of the A records (What’s an A record?) to the IP address of the Linux instance running the page. Once the changes were made, the page’s presence was consitent.
It was a fun little project that got me excited about setting up Linux in the cloud – no local computer needed – and the future possibilities with this. Cloud is the future, man.
You can find the search engine at search.charleseroop.com.