Description
Replacely is an administration tool that lets WordPress site owners and developers safely find and replace exact text inside post, page, custom-post-type, and Elementor content across a curated list of URLs or paths.
Unlike search-and-replace tools that scan the whole database blindly, this plugin operates surgically: you provide the list of URLs you want to touch, the exact text to find, and the exact text to replace it with. Nothing else is modified.
Highlights
- Exact, case-sensitive matching. No regex surprises.
- Accept full URLs (e.g.
https://example.com/sample-page/) and relative paths (e.g./sample-page/). - Detect target post automatically via
url_to_postid(), supporting any registered post type. - Elementor-aware: also replaces text inside Elementor page content (
_elementor_data) and refreshes Elementor’s CSS cache afterward. - Dry Run mode shows what would change before any database write.
- Results dashboard with summary tiles, detailed table, status colors, dashicons, and replacement counts split by source (classic content vs. Elementor).
- One-click CSV export and Copy results to clipboard.
- Persistent activity log of every live replacement (page, post type, replacement count, user, timestamp, View/Edit links). Keeps the 200 most recent updates and can be cleared anytime. Dry runs are never logged.
- Hardened security: capability checks, nonces, sanitisation, escaping, direct-access protection.
- Skips revisions, auto-drafts, and trashed posts. Duplicate URLs are processed only once.
- Clean uninstall: deleting the plugin removes all of its data (activity-log option and per-user transients) from the database, multisite-aware. Your content changes are kept.
- Translation-ready.
Built for reliability
- Object-oriented architecture with namespaced classes.
- Modular file structure: bootstrap, plugin container, admin page, replacer service, helper utilities.
- Polished, responsive admin UI that complements the native WordPress design language.
Installation
- Upload the
replacelyfolder to/wp-content/plugins/, or install the ZIP via Plugins Add New Upload Plugin. - Activate the plugin from the Plugins screen.
- Navigate to Tools Replacely.
FAQ
-
Is matching case-sensitive?
-
Yes. Matching is exact and case-sensitive, so
Helloandhelloare not considered the same. -
Can I use regular expressions?
-
No. By design, the plugin uses exact string replacement to avoid the typical foot-guns of regex-based replacements on production data.
-
Does it support custom post types?
-
Yes. Any post type whose permalink resolves through
url_to_postid()is supported, including CPTs registered by other plugins or themes. -
Does it work with Elementor?
-
Yes. Elementor stores its page content as JSON in the
_elementor_datapost meta rather than inpost_content, so the plugin searches and replaces inside that data as well — decoding it, replacing the text safely, re-encoding it, and saving. After a live run it regenerates Elementor’s cached CSS so the change appears on the front end. Other page builders that keep content in their own storage are not covered. -
Will my revisions be modified?
-
No. Revisions, auto-drafts, and trashed posts are skipped.
-
How do I undo a replacement?
-
There is no automatic undo. Always take a full database backup before running a live replacement, or use Dry Run first to verify the impact.
-
Where are results stored?
-
The most recent results are stored in a short-lived per-user transient (15 minutes) solely so the CSV export endpoint can stream them.
-
What is the Activity Log?
-
A persistent, on-screen audit trail of every page changed by a live replacement. Each entry records the page title, post ID, post type, resolved URL, replacement count, the user who ran it, and the timestamp, with View and Edit links. It keeps the 200 most recent updates (older entries are pruned automatically) and survives across sessions. Dry-run previews are never logged, since nothing is written to the database. It is stored in a single capped option and can be emptied with Clear log — clearing the log deletes only the log, not the underlying content changes.
-
What happens to my data when I uninstall the plugin?
-
The plugin cleans up after itself. Deleting it from the Plugins screen removes everything it stored in the database: the activity-log option and every per-user results/state transient (on multisite, this runs for each site in the network). The actual content changes made to your posts are intentionally left in place, since those are real edits to your site rather than plugin data.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Replacely – Bulk Content Find & Replace by URLs” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “Replacely – Bulk Content Find & Replace by URLs” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.4
- Renamed the plugin to “Replacely – Bulk Content Find & Replace by URLs” and standardized internal prefixes, namespace, and admin asset identifiers. No user-facing functional change.
- Hardened the CSV export against spreadsheet formula injection.
1.0.3
- Added: replacement counts are now broken down by source — classic post content vs. Elementor content — across the results summary tiles, the results table, the “pages updated” panel, the activity log, and the CSV export.
1.0.2
- Fixed: dashicons in the Copy Results, Export CSV, View, and Edit buttons are now vertically centered with their button labels.
1.0.1
- Added: clean uninstall. Deleting the plugin now removes the activity-log option and all per-user results/state transients from the database (multisite-aware), leaving no plugin data behind. Content changes are preserved.
1.0.0
- Initial release.