Better Search Replace plug-in how-to help

  • Resolved midlife mama

    (@midlife-mama)


    6 years, 1 month ago

    Hello:
    I’ve switched my website to SSL and when I click through my website, the URLs all seem to have https://. I’ve downloaded Better Search Replace to make sure all my internal links are secure. But when I ran a “dry run” with the plug in for the post table, it came back saying 552 cells need updating! Yikes! Does this mean that perhaps photos are not SSL and other things that I cannot see?

    To be honest, I’m a bit confused how to use the plug in properly as I’m not a tech person just a blogger. I backed up my database before starting.

    But here’s another question: what do I put it for the fields “search for” and “replace with?” I’m assuming that I can just put the URL for my website? (ie https://example.com and https://example.com) And which tables do I need to select? Right now I only ran the scan for posts.

    Thanks in advance.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

  • You need to be careful with what gets changed. The posts table contains GUID, which should _not_ change, but will match.
    If your intent is to have all URLs using https, then you need to change images and links pointing to other posts/pages.

    Thread Starter midlife mama

    (@midlife-mama)

    Thanks, Joy.
    I think I understand the first part of your answer–don’t change. And, yes, my intent is to have all URLs use https, so I do need to change images and links. Can’t I use this plug in for that?

    If it changes by table, no. I haven’t used it.
    I did use Search Regex, which lets you choose to which part to change. You can set it to change post_content only, which is what you need for the images and links.
    But I have a concern about whether the attachment data contains a full URL or not, and it’s stored in postmeta, not in posts table.

    Thread Starter midlife mama

    (@midlife-mama)

    Thanks, Joy. Sadly, I’m not following much of what you’re saying as I’m a blogger and don’t really understand much of the technical side of wordpress. I’m trying….

    My search for an answer continues but I appreciate your trying to help.

    The post content, along with other attributes like title, author, date, etc. is stored in the posts table. One field in that table is GUID, which should not be changed.
    Media such as images, PDFs, audio are also stored in the posts table. But media has multiple files for different sizes and thumbnails, so the information for those is stored in the postmeta table. The data stored includes the width and height and file name, but I’d have to look to see if it is a complete URL, or just a name.

    I think I used Better Search and Replace long ago. I more recently used Search Regex plugin, so I know it has a way to restrict the changes to just the post content (so it wouldn’t touch the GUID). But I don’t think it does anything on postmeta (not sure if it’s needed).

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    I use that plugin all the time — it’s safe to use. There’s a checkbox to ignore the GUIDs, though unless your site is heavily followed via RSS, there’s not much danger in changing them, too.

    Thread Starter midlife mama

    (@midlife-mama)

    Thanks, Joy and Steven.

    I ran a back up and I’m just nervous to pull the trigger on Better Search Replace. But from what I’m understanding here, don’t check GUID. I will type https:// in the “search for” box and https:// in the “replace with” box. I will also highlight ALL fields.

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    search for https://example.com and replace with https://example.com in all tables, with the “dry run” box unchecked.

    Thread Starter midlife mama

    (@midlife-mama)

    Thanks!

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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