WordPress Multisite Tip: Add a Search Bar to the “My Sites” Menu

photo credit: sylvar - cc
photo credit: sylvarcc

If you’re managing a multisite network where you’ve created a long list of sites, the “My Sites” menu in the admin bar can get so lengthy that it becomes difficult to navigate. 10up engineer Kailey Lampert designed an elegant solution to this problem.

The My Sites Search plugin does exactly what it says on the label. Once installed, it adds a search bar to filter the “My Sites” menu in WordPress multisite. It narrows the site list down as you type, making it simple to locate a site in your list.

Before you install the plugin, your site list might look something like this:

before

With My Sites Search installed, you’ll have a search bar added to the top of the “My Sites” dropdown, allowing you to quickly navigate to any of your sites on the network.

after

As soon as I saw the plugin, I had to test it, having come up against this problem many times. It works exactly as advertised. My Sites Search is especially useful on closed networks where the super admin user has set up all of the sites. This normally results in a long “My Sites” list, as opposed to networks with open registration where users generally only register one site apiece.

Small enhancements like this can help to make your super admin life easier. If your “My Sites” dropdown is getting out of control, download the My Sites Search plugin from GiHub.

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5 responses to “WordPress Multisite Tip: Add a Search Bar to the “My Sites” Menu”

  1. Excelent tip Sarah!

    Thanks Kailey for such nice plugin.

    Katherine Semel-Munson has developed another useful plugin for multisites: https://wordpress.org/plugins/network-plugin-auditor/

    “This plugin adds columns to your Network Admin on the Sites, Themes and Plugins pages to show which of your sites have each plugin and theme activated. Now you can easily determine which plugins and themes are used on your network sites and which can be safely removed.”

    This is also available at GitHub: https://github.com/ksemel/network-plugin-auditor

    Cheers,
    Gabriel

    • Easy fix could be to replace the list with one link that points to my-sites.php – we organized our list of hundreds of sites into flyout categories but it is not a simple process. Check out the WP_Admin_Bar class for ideas.

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