Find and Replace Text in WordPress

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There may be several reasons why you want to search and replace text on your WordPress website with one click. In this article, I focus on some ways you can easily find and replace words or phrases (also called find and replace ) without having to manually check many posts or pages.

The 'search and replace' function is widely used in many applications every day. Think of documents written with a word processor like Word or Pages, where there is a chance that a particular term that is repeated a lot may not be correct. In these word processors, it is, therefore, possible to perform a "search and replace" action with one click on the button, which means that you do not have to manually find and replace all the wrong text manually. Finding and replacing text in WordPress is more complicated because you often do not want to search on one page but on all of your pages. However, you can search and replace text in several ways without requiring technical knowledge.

Find and replace text with a WordPress plugin

Obviously, there is a WordPress plugin that allows you to easily search words or phrases (also called strings ) on your entire website, and then replace them with a string you can enter. The plugin searches your database for the string you fill in and then replaces it. A plugin that allows you to do this is Search & Replace. However, before you think about a plugin, it's important that you first make a full  WordPress backup, so you can always get back - if something goes wrong.

Search & Replace WordPress plugin

The Search & Replace WordPress plugin is free to download in the WordPress.org plugin directory. This WordPress plugin has been downloaded more than a hundred thousand times and users are satisfied: Search & Replace gets on average 4.4 out of 5.0 stars. Features of this plugin include finding and replacing text in your WordPress database, changing the URL of your WordPress installation (backup first!), Creating database backup and restoring the database backup. Search & Replace also works on WordPress Multisite installations, allowing you to replace text on a single page with one click.

Find and replace text with SQL - Phpmyadmin

This solution is only suitable for the technicians who have knowledge of databases, SQL and PHPMyAdmin. Make a backup of your database (also in Phpmyadmin) before continuing. If you go to the database of your website in Phpmyadmin, you can apply SQL. To do this, click the "SQL" tab and enter the following text:

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UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE ( post_content, 'Oude test', 'Nieuwe text');

Before you run this script, you have to take care of some things. First of all, only the  wp_posts table will search, which will not change a text in other tables.

Database