Title: postmeta key trigger sql
Last modified: July 30, 2021

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# postmeta key trigger sql

 *  [manuelperrotta](https://wordpress.org/support/users/manuelperrotta/)
 * (@manuelperrotta)
 * [4 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/postmeta-key-trigger-sql/)
 * How do I find the postmeta key with which the value of a particular flag is saved
   and change the value in SQL for a bulk of them?
 * Or maybe is not postmetameta?
 * I need to unflag “Featured post option” from all the articles in range of time
   from 2008 to 2011

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * (@bcworkz)
 * [4 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/postmeta-key-trigger-sql/#post-14724655)
 * “Featured post option” isn’t something offered by core WP. There is a “sticky
   post” feature, where the applicable IDs are saved as an option value, but that
   may not be how “featured posts” are managed. Featured post is likely something
   your theme has implemented. You could ask in your theme’s dedicated support channel
   how they are saved. You could trace through theme source code to find where/how
   featured posts are saved.
 * You could poke around in the phpMyAdmin app (low level access to the database)
   looking for clues. For example, if you designated a featured post which has never
   been featured before, if such a value is saved in postmeta, the applicable record
   will likely be near the bottom of the table and one of the few using that particular
   post’s ID. Or use the search feature to find all records using that posts’s ID.
   Hopefully the key value is recognizable as one for featured posts.
 * If not found in postmeta, there’s a chance it’s in the theme_mod option for your
   theme.
 *  Thread Starter [manuelperrotta](https://wordpress.org/support/users/manuelperrotta/)
 * (@manuelperrotta)
 * [4 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/postmeta-key-trigger-sql/#post-14725333)
 * How can I backup and than save and delete all posts from 2012 to 2015?
 *  Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * (@bcworkz)
 * [4 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/postmeta-key-trigger-sql/#post-14727199)
 * You can use the built-in export tool to save posts in a date range. It’s wise
   to verify that an import plugin can successfully import the exported data before
   deleting the posts.
 * Don’t try to use SQL or phpMyAdmin to delete directly, unless you’re very good
   at SQL and understanding the taxonomy tables. You’re very likely to leave many
   loose ends otherwise. The safe approach is with custom PHP code. Query for all
   posts you want removed using WP_Query class’ “date_query” argument. Then loop
   through the results one by one, deleting each in turn.
 * If there are many many posts to delete, this is going to take some time, risking
   hitting PHP’s max execution time limit. You could increase this with something
   like `@ini_set('max_execution_time', 120 );` added to wp-config.php. Don’t make
   it too long though, or you could introduce usability issues.
 * If there’s still too many posts for the time allotted, limit the posts returned
   with the “posts_per_page” argument of WP_Query. Then rerun the removal code multiple
   times until it can no longer find posts within the specified range.
 * You could instead use the back end posts list table to bulk delete the posts 
   listed on one screen. The posts per screen can be increased up to 99 I believe.
   So you’d only be able to delete 99 posts at a time this way. This may or may 
   not be quite tedious to do, but might still be faster than developing custom 
   deletion code.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘postmeta key trigger sql’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [metadata](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/metadata/)
 * [postmeta](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/postmeta/)
 * [sql](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/sql/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * Last activity: [4 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/postmeta-key-trigger-sql/#post-14727199)
 * Status: not resolved

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