Not sure anyone is reading this any more, but I’ve had the same problem as the OP, and there seems to be a shortcoming in the way WordPress handles exports of customisations in themes.
The problem: how to customise a block theme on a website on one server (e.g. a dev server) then copy/replicate the customisation to another server (e.g. the live server) with the same theme and same/similar website.
I can’t see any way to do that except to write down all the cusomisation, and enter it by hand on the second server.
I could export the customised site as @gappiah suggested in post 2, but that creates problems. When you customise a site with the site editor, it doesn’t change the theme in (e.g.) …/wp-content/themes/twentytwentyfour/, that stays “pure”. Rather, it stores the customisation in the database (mainly in wp-options, I think).
E.g. if you customise the header (using the site editor), the file header.html in the theme is not altered, the change is stored in the database. But when you export as per @gappiah, the exported zip contains a modified theme with a modified header.html. If you load that on another site you haven’t replicated the first site, that is with a “pure” theme plus database changes. Instead you have an altered theme. Thus if the theme is updated subsequently, it will overwrite your customisations.
Your search plugin is enormously useful to us. We have a photo archive for a local history society with nearly 2,000 mainly historic photos of the town of Framlingham, and for that number search is a great advantage. See http://framlinghamarchive.org.uk/search-ngg-images/. That link is still running the old (non block) theme (but with the new version of the plugin) as the new theme is currently running on a VM on my desktop. I’ve tested the new one on several block themes and it works fine.
Yesterday I had already found that I could make the field appear by adding a “height” to the css, but saw that the box was not populated by the placeholder text, and the input field was clearly not working, and your reply explains that.
As a test, I created a static page with [hr_SIS_nextgen_searchbox] and [hr_SIS_display_images]. Using Astra theme (not a block/FSE theme) this works fine. See first screenshot below.
When I switch to a block theme, the page renders without the searchbox; I just see the magnifying glass at the right but nothing else. I’ve tried themes Twenty Twenty-Four, Twenty Twenty-Three, Bricksy and Skeleton FSE. All render the same way. Second screenshot is with Twenty Twenty-Three theme, magnifying glass visible on the right.
I don’t think the widget works in a block (FSE) theme. Neither block or template editor will allow me to add it to a template or page.
Apologies if I’m making some basic mistake. I tried putting the short codes in separate blocks or in a single Classic block, same result.
