How to Perform Mass Search and Replace in WordPress

Sometimes, you may find yourself needing to do a mass find and replace to fix issues. Here are a few scenarios where this might be necessary:

• Weird characters in blog entries after upgrade. After upgrading WordPress, you might see characters like “Â, “Â € ™”, “??” in your posts.
• Rename keyword1 to keyword2. If you need to rename keyword1 to keyword2 across your entire database, editing a large database file manually isn’t practical. Downloading and uploading large files can be time-consuming and inefficient.
• Discovered a typo. If you’ve been using a phrase and realize it’s misspelled, you’ll want to search and replace this typo across all your blog content.
• and other similar situations…

Here are some methods to perform mass find and replace in WordPress blog entries. Always back up your database to avoid any data loss.

Search and Replace with WordPress Plugin

This plugin provides an interface in WP-Admin to search and replace text across all blog posts. Download and install the plugin to get started.

Download Search and Replace plugin.

MySQL Search and Replace via PhpMyAdmin

This method requires access to PhpMyAdmin. If you’re not familiar with PhpMyAdmin, DO NOT USE THIS METHOD. Always backup your database before proceeding.

1. Open your database in PhpMyAdmin.
2. To change the contents, we’ll use the “wp_posts” table and the “post_content” field as an example. Click on the SQL tab.

   

3. Paste the following code into the textarea:

    UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE (
    post_content,
    'Item to replace here',
    'Replacement text here');
    

   Ensure all text is within the quotes ”. Double-check everything before hitting the GO button.

When you hit the GO button, it will search the post_content field in the wp_posts table for ‘Item to replace here‘ and replace it with ‘Replacement text here‘.