Installation

  • Upload the Switchboard themes folder to /themes/third_party/switchboard.
  • Upload the Switchboard system folder to /system/expressionengine/third_party/switchboard.
  • Install the accessory and extension.

Switchboard Settings

Switchboard requires no configuration, but there are some settings you can tweak to suit your preferences. Just open Switchboard and click the settings button to get started.

  • On the search form if the ‘Search within entries’ checkbox is enabled Switchboard will search channel entry data in addition to entry titles.

  • If you wish you can apply a custom sort order to your search results. Simply drag and drop the result categories into your preferred order.

  • Unchecking the box alongside a results category will remove it from search results for all users. Bear in mind that Switchboard will detect user’s permissions automatically, so if for example your ‘Clients’ member group is blocked from accessing templates, there’s no need to disable template searching within Switchboard.

  • You can specify a more intuitive accessory name (e.g. Search) using the custom accessory name setting.

  • If you don’t use them (or you’re ideologically opposed to the presence of Flash in any form) you can disable the copy-to-clipboard buttons.

  • By default Switchboard uses ctrl+key shortcuts but if you prefer you can switch to alt+key or you can disable keyboard shortcuts entirely.

Search by URL (Alfred, LaunchBar etc)

Your Switchboard search URL can be found on the Switchboard settings page. Alfred users benefit from a one-click install, but for everyone else simply copy the provided URL and replace ‘yourqueryhere’ with the appropriate query variable name.

Keyboard Navigation

  • By default ctrl-s will open (or close) Switchboard with the search field focussed.
  • With the search field focussed hit ↓ to move to the first results row. This works for recent searches too.
  • ↑ and ↓ will select the first link on the previous/next row and ↑ will focus the search field if you’re already on the top results row.
  • ← and → will move the selected link horizontally.
  • The enter key will load the selected link.
  • The escape key will reset Switchboard and focus the search field ready for you to start typing your next query.

Working with Templates

Switchboard supports an alternative search syntax for template-specific queries. This is particularly useful if your search term is fairly generic and you’d like to filter out non-template results. To trigger this behaviour start your query with a forward slash as if you were entering a file path.

  • /new will return any templates or template groups whose name matches or begins with ‘new’.
  • /new/ will return all of the templates within groups whose names match or begin with ‘new’.
  • /new/css will return any templates whose name begins with ‘css’ and whose parent group matches or begins with ‘new’.

The leading slash is entirely optional but non-template matches will be included in your results if it is omitted.

Example Searches

  • /index – list the index templates in all of your template groups.
  • /assets/ – list the contents of your assets template group.
  • /a/css – matches /assets/css_screen, /assets/css_ie and so on.