Search Regex

Description

Search Regex adds a powerful set of search and replace functions to WordPress posts, pages, custom post types, and other data sources. These go beyond the standard searching capabilities, and allow you to search and replace almost any data stored on your site. In addition to simple searches you have the full power of PHP’s regular expressions at your disposal.

You can use this to do things like:
– Help migrate a site from one domain to another
– Update URLs in links and images
– Perform site-wide changes

Search filters can be created to match any column of any WordPress table. For example:
– Find all posts in a category
– Find all post meta data without a post
– Find all posts in a date range

Search Regex handles small and large sites.

Search Regex has been tested with PHP from 7.0 to 8.3.

What can I search?

You can search:
– Posts
– Pages
– Any custom post type
– Comments (including spam)
– Users
– Meta data
– WordPress options
– Supported plugins (such as Redirection)

Full regular expression support is provided, and you can capture data and use it in the replacement.

Actions

A variety of actions can be performed on matching results:
– Modify and replace the result
– Delete the result
– Export to CSV and SQL
– Perform custom PHP action

Modify and Replace Data

Results can be individually modified by clicking on the item to change, and using the popup modifier.

Bulk modifications can be performed against all matching results.

The types of modification depend on the data being changed:
– Numbers can be added or subtracted to existing numbers
– Hours, days, weeks, and months, can be added to dates
– Tags and categories can be added, removed, and substitued

Custom shortcodes are supported that allow dynamic data to be included:
– Add the current date and time, in any format, to content
– Insert data from other columns. For example, insert the category into the title
– Transform existing data. For example, convert case, change underscores to dashes.

Example uses

Some ideas for potential uses:
– Delete all comments that match a phrase
– Add a category to all matching posts
– Remove orphaned meta data

Support

Please submit bugs, patches, and feature requests to:

https://github.com/johngodley/search-regex

Please submit translations to:

https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/search-regex

Translations

Translations are provided by WordPress itself. You can update the translations by going to the Dashboard > Updates section of WP admin.

Documentation

Full documentation can be found on the Search Regex site.

Screenshots

  • Search options
  • Inline search and replace
  • Inline editor

Installation

The plugin is simple to install:

  1. Download search-regex.zip
  2. Unzip
  3. Upload search-regex directory to your /wp-content/plugins directory
  4. Go to the plugin management page and enable the plugin
  5. Configure the options from the Tools/Search Regex page

You can find full details of installing a plugin on the plugin installation page.

Reviews

October 3, 2024
Works perfectly. For those having issues, you need to proceed with regex with caution (always backup first), as the plugin notes.
October 1, 2024
Why on earth does the entire post get deleted when I’m only trying to replace a string? While attempting to delete specific keywords across multiple posts using the ‘Delete Matches’ button, the entire posts containing those keywords were deleted. There was no warning, and the posts didn’t even move to the trash. This tool is absolutely terrible.
سبتمبر 1, 2024
An absolute must-have for people migrating huge data and having to correct loads of broken links. Does for free, with a quite powerful interface, what others promise to provide if you pay first.
أوت 20, 2024
For a plugin called SEARCH REGEX, maybe have REGEX enabled by default? For a title feature to be hidden in dropdown is a bit annoying. If someone is installing this, they clearly looked for REGEX eh? I’d suggest keeping REGEX enable/disable a separate setting that is always visible.
ديسومبر 11, 2023
This is one of the worst plugins I have ever seen. It loves to silently delete your posts. All you have to do is touch that “Delete” link that spends most of its time invisible, hiding 10 pixels from the “View” link, and POOF! your post is gone. Forever. Not in the trash, not made private or draft, no, it is gone right out of the database table like it never existed. There is no warning, no confirmation, nothing. In fact, it happens so fast you will probably miss it. Much later, you will wonder what happened to all your posts – now you know. I finally had to hack the javascript and disable the delete function to make the plugin safe enough to use at all. But even after that, I found it had gotten me a second time, and I’m afraid I just don’t know how many more posts this plugin has eaten. There is no record, they are just gone. I finally disabled most of the user interface, as no part of it is safe – you can end up doing a lot of damage without even realizing it. Most of that is irrelevant junk anyway – why should a search-and-replace have built-in edit and delete functions anyway? This plugin actually does most of what it advertises, and pretty well, but if you are going to use it, be extremely careful. The user interface is generally clunky, vague and unhelpful, and you are left wondering what any operation might do. At one point, it deleted my entire database instead of replacing a string as it seemed to advertise. No warning or confirmation, just deleted everything. Luckily, by then I was extremely suspicious and made a fresh backup first. Sometimes match means a few characters, sometimes it means the entire post, and sometimes it means the entire database. You get to find out the fun way. This plugin is a complete boobytrap.
Read all 94 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Search Regex” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Search Regex” has been translated into 7 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Search Regex” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

3.1.1 – November 23rd 2024

  • Update for WordPress 6.7

3.1.0 – August 8th 2024

  • Update for latest WP
  • Fix export of regular expression result
  • Switch to WP core translations
  • See changelog.txt for more details