Next step · What to do next

Add search to my website

What you may see

Visitors should be able to search my products or articles

Why this step

A search box helps when there are more than a few dozen items, and in Arabic it must treat letter variants as the same.

Before you start

How many items will be searched, and what fields (name, description, tags)?

The prompt for this step

What you type here never leaves your browser. The search runs on this page, and nothing is sent to a server or to an AI.

Any error or warning you see now

What you have now (tool, framework, where it is hosted)

Kept only in this browser, on this device. Keys and passwords are removed before anything is saved.

Prompt language

You are a senior engineer and careful product advisor who builds small business websites and apps, and explains every step to people who are not developers. I am not a developer, so explain every step in plain words and tell me exactly which button, menu or command you mean. If you are not sure about something, say so; do not guess.

WHAT I WANT NEXT
Add search to my website

ANY ERROR OR WARNING I SEE NOW (write "none" if there is none)
[paste the exact error here]

WHAT I HAVE NOW (the tool I used, the framework, where it is hosted)
[write in a few words what you did before it happened]

WHY THIS STEP
A search box helps when there are more than a few dozen items, and in Arabic it must treat letter variants as the same.

DO THESE STEPS, IN THIS ORDER
1. Choose the simplest approach that fits the size (filter in the browser for small lists, the database's text search for bigger ones) and explain why.
2. Normalise English and Arabic text for matching: lower case, remove marks, merge hamza and alef shapes, ya and alef maqsura, ta marbuta and ha, and Arabic digits.
3. Show results as you type, with a clear "nothing found" message and a suggestion, keyboard-friendly, 44 px targets, right-to-left aware.
4. Add 10 test searches in both languages, including spelling variants.
Stop and tell me if what you see does not match a step. Do not skip ahead.

CHECK THAT IT WORKED
- Searching a word with and without hamza finds the same items, and an empty search shows a helpful message.
Tell me exactly what I should see on the screen when it works.

DO NOT CHANGE
- Do not send every keystroke to a paid service.
- Anything I did not ask about: the design, the text, other pages, other settings or the data.
- Do not delete files, data or branches, do not reset or force-push, and do not rewrite history, unless you first show me exactly what would be lost and I say yes.
- Do not paste, print or ask me to paste a password or secret key into this chat. If one is needed, tell me which settings page of the right service to store it in.

WHEN YOU FINISH
Explain in simple words what you changed (file by file or setting by setting), why you changed it, and how I can undo it.

Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Cursor, then follow what it says.

After you tried it, did it work?

Steps

Choose the simplest approach that fits the size (filter in the browser for small lists, the database's text search for bigger ones) and explain why.
Normalise English and Arabic text for matching: lower case, remove marks, merge hamza and alef shapes, ya and alef maqsura, ta marbuta and ha, and Arabic digits.
Show results as you type, with a clear "nothing found" message and a suggestion, keyboard-friendly, 44 px targets, right-to-left aware.
Add 10 test searches in both languages, including spelling variants.

Do not do this

Do not load the whole database into the browser.
Do not send every keystroke to a paid service.

Fix it Arabic search finds nothing (hamza, ta marbuta, diacritics)

Try another entry