I’m terrible at learning by using WordPress tutorials. Refusing to read instructions might be the most manly thing about me, followed by my beard and my love for plaid shirts. For whatever reason, it’s just easier for me to jump right into something new and figure it out as I go along. Sure, I do have to look stuff up on occasion, but that’s not as big of a deal as you might think.
Or at least, it wasn’t as big of a deal until I started finding small little tidbits of knowledge that would have been helpful to me years ago! So, if it’s ok with you, I’m going to confess some of my stupidity publicly in hopes that someone else, as equally incapable of reading instructions as I am, will benefit and learn without wasting years.
The Problem
I had a bunch of pages that had comments enabled, and I needed a quick way to disable all of them. That’s when I started to look around at the options available to me. “I wonder what I can do with this ‘Bulk Edit’ function?”
(Cue “Halelujah Chorus”)
Through WordPress’ native bulk edit feature I was able to change all of the posts to “Do not allow [comments]” in seconds. Yep, a feature that’s probably been there for years totally saved my day! So, how can you use bulk edit to save you a considerable amount of time and a vast amount of patience?
The Solution
Bulk edit can used for a variety of time-saving situations on both WordPress pages and posts. For posts, it can be used to:
- Change the posts’ categories
- Add tags
- Change the author
- Allow or disallow comments and/or pings
- Change the posts’ status (Published, Private, Pending Review, Draft)
- Change the posts’ format (Standard, Quote, Link, Video, Image, etc.)
- Change whether the post is sticky or not
You can’t do as much with pages, but then again, you really don’t need to do much with pages. Even still, you can:
- Change the author
- Change the parent page
- Allow or disallow comments
- Adjust settings given to you by your theme/plugins
To clarify, that last one is important. You can see in my screenshots that I have a “template” option and a “sidebar” option in my settings. That’s because my theme (Resurrect from churchthemes.com) has templates designed to give my pages a standardized and specified appearance, i.e. a sermons page, an events page, etc., and those templates, combined with a plugin, allow me to create customized sidebar menus for specific pages. Does that sound cool? Cause it really should. I’ll explain this further in a future post, when I review my theme.
The Greater Lesson
So, what’s the real point of me writing this? Surely I don’t expect anyone of you WordPress experts out there to have really learned something, do I? Well, yes, I partially do. It never hurts to be reminded of simple, basic things. I’m sure I’ve forgotten more about the Bible than I can possibly imagine, so to make sure that I never forget it all, I read it everyday. If that same principle of reviewing the basics applies there, I’m sure it applies here as well.
However, beyond that, there is a greater lesson here: read the instructions, confess your ignorance, ask for help. If I had done any of those, I might have learned how to apply the bulk edit feature months, even years ago. I wasted so much time because I had isolated myself from any source of instruction or correction. Let’s all try to be more open and honest, always looking to learn and grow.
What are some obvious “tips” that you’ve stumbled across the long, hard way?
Erik van der Eijk says
Even if you use premium themes, it’s a good idea to test the bulk edit options before you ‘really’ use them. I’ve seen quite a few themes that overwrite everything, that can’t be edited in the bulk mode, with blank fields.
This primarily happens with (poorly coded) custom post fields. Just a friendly bit of advise to anyone who doesn’t want to loose all their hard work. ๐
Eric Dye says
GAH!!! Thanks for the warning, Erik. ๐
Phil Schneider says
Erik, just to clarify, if I bulk edit some pages, then change to one of these themes that doesn’t play well with bulk edit, all of my previous edits may be lost?
Eric Dye says
If you listen closely, you can hear shrieks of despair….
Erik van der Eijk says
@Eric: Yes ๐ I’ve recently lost all links of over 800 link posts. Had to re-enter them 1-by-1. Am now using back-ups of every change I make, even when in development.
Eric Dye says
Oh, snap. Huge #FAIL there. But I’ve done plenty WordPress junk commando a plenty of times myself. #guilty
It’s always a good idea to run that quick database backup first…
Erik van der Eijk says
Not that I know of. The only experience I’ve had on a few occassions, was that pages/posts/products that had already been filled with content, for example the page content would disappear when I used bulk edit to change or add something.
Of what I have been able to determine, is that it only occurs when you use a theme or plugin with custom post types that don’t play well with bulk edit.
Phil Schneider says
Hmm. Good to know. Horrifying, but good to know.
T E Hanna says
And what I learned… Whoa! There are quote formats???
Phil Schneider says
It depends on what custom types your theme allows for. I don’t use the Quote format on this current theme because I don’t like how it looks. The dearly departed Standard Theme had a great Quote format. Ahhh. Simpler times.