Do you want to bulk delete WordPress posts? WordPress makes it very easy to manage posts from the admin area. However, if you want to delete a large number of posts, their selection and deletion may take some time. In this article, we will show you two quick and easy solutions to bulk delete WordPress posts from your blog.
This method is easier and is recommended for all users. It uses the built-in functionality of WordPress to quickly select a large number of posts and delete them.
First, you need to visit Posts »All Posts page. From here, you can click the bulk select box at the top to select all the posts displayed on the page.
If you don't want to delete all the selected posts, you can now go ahead and uncheck those posts. Otherwise, you can click the 'General Options' dropdown menu and select the 'Move to Trash' option.
Next, you need to click the 'Apply' button to remove the selected posts.
WordPress will now move the selected posts to the trash.
Using this default method, you can only select 20 posts at a time. What if you wanted to delete hundreds of posts?
Simply click the 'Screen Options' button in the top right corner of the screen. This will bring up a dropdown menu where you need to change the 'Number of items per page' to whatever number you want.
Next, click the Apply button and WordPress will display the number of posts you selected earlier. You can now go ahead and bulk delete the posts as described above.
Note:Deleted posts will be moved to the WordPress Trash and will remain there for 30 days. After that, they will be permanently removed from your WordPress database.
Bulk delete posts by author or specific category
Now let's say you want to delete posts filed under a specific category/tag or written by a specific author. You can simply click on the author, category, or tag links to display the posts associated with them.
For example, clicking on the 'News' category will show you the list of archived posts in that category. You can then select the posts and move them to the trash using the general options menu.
The default bulk delete options are quite adequate for most users. However, there are some cases where you may need more options to quickly select specific posts and then delete them en masse.
For example, if you want to delete archived posts in the last few days or posts older than a certain number of days?
Fortunately, there is a plugin that allows you to bulk delete posts using advanced filters.
First, you need to install and activate the bulk delete plugin. For more details, check out our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, go to Bulk WP »Bulk Delete Posts page in your WordPress admin area to delete posts. The plugin offers several ways to filter and select the posts you want to remove.
You can filter posts by duration, select posts published in the last x days, delete them instantly without sending them to trash, and even schedule to delete them later.
As you scroll down the settings screen, you'll find more options for selecting and deleting posts by categories, custom taxonomies, custom post types, and more.
Bulk delete can also be used to delete comments, pages, users and custom fields.
We hope this article helped you learn how to easily delete WordPress posts using these two methods. You may also want to see our list of the best WordPress plugins for business websites.
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