Ever inherit an ExpressionEngine site and wonder what’s actually being used?
Templates on top of templates, layouts calling layouts, embeds buried a few levels deep. Some of it’s active. Some of it probably isn’t. But it’s hard to tell without pulling the whole thing apart.
So we built something to make that easier: Haystack. (A free addon in the ExpressionEngine Addon store)
A few screenshots of the addon in action:
Dashboard
Detail View
Template Info tag
Haystack logs what your site is actually doing. Drop in a single tag, usually in your main layout, and let it run. As traffic comes through, it records which templates, embeds, partials, and variables are being used. Then you can review it in the control panel, or export the data and work through it however you want.
Video
The useful part is what happens after that. Let it collect traffic for a bit, and you start to get a clear picture. What templates are truly in use. What’s never touched. What might be safe to remove. (Or at least worth questioning.) No more guessing, no more “I think this is fine to delete.” Just real data to back it up.
If you’re working on a complex build, or cleaning up something you inherited, this is a pretty straightforward way to reduce the noise and simplify the project without breaking things.
