Search Regex – A must have WordPress Plugin

There are times when you want to make a change across all your posts. Consider following examples:

• I have a dedicated page for firefox on this blog with AdSense’s firefox download code. Earlier I used to link that from every “download firefox” link. But as Google retired there AdSense for referral program, I thought its better to send visitors directly to official firefox download page. So task was to replace all link of type A with type B.
• I kept open this blog for guest authors from long time. Earlier, I used to send interested people to registration page. Then I created a dedicated page about joining Devils Workshop. And so I needed to replace all links.
• Gaurav Dua of Orkut Plus first moved his blog from blogspot subdomain to .org top-domain and for some unfortunate reasons, again shifted to .net domain. In all these transitions, links remain in-tact, but speaking for my posts I would love to give links which will not redirect. Technically its not bog deal but from user experience point of view its good thing. Again task is to replace all links of type A and B with type C.
• Then there is another top blogger Darnell Clayton from Inside Orkut who started with blogspot subdomain but with time registered top level .COM domain.
• OK enough about links. Now lets come back to some text. Gaurav Dua of Orkut Plus started his blogging career under nickname Jerry. He no longer uses that name but my old posts had it. So here I wanted to replace Jerry with Gaurav in my all posts.

Looks like there is lots of work to do when you encounter such examples in your blogging career. Of course if your on Blogger then you have to edit each post manually but if you are on wordpress. there is a plugin for everything.

Of course, those who comfortable with MySQL can directly write queries to do such jobs but I still advise using Search Regex wordpress plugin.

With this plugin, you can not only do search and replace of any text but can also preview changes first. All form one page! Power users can also use regular expressions too.

This is one of my most favorite wordpress plugins.

Link: Search Regex WordPress Plugin by John Godley.