How to Bulk Delete WordPress Posts (2 Easy Solutions)

Do you want to bulk delete WordPress posts?

It’s easy to manage individual posts from the admin area. However, if you want to delete a large number of posts, selecting and deleting each post individually can take a lot of time.

In this article, we will show you two quick and easy ways to bulk delete WordPress posts from your blog.

Why Bulk Delete WordPress Posts?

When you want to remove a post from your WordPress website, you can simply go to Posts » All Posts and hover over the article you want to delete.

When it appears, simply click on the ‘Trash’ link to send that post to the trash.

By default, WordPress automatically deletes anything that has been in the trash for 30 days. After that, they will be permanently deleted from your WordPress database unless you’ve disabled the automatic empty trash feature.

However, sometimes you may need to bulk delete posts. For example, if you accept guest blogs, then you may get dozens or even hundreds of posts that aren’t suitable for your website. Deleting each post manually would take a lot of time.

With that being said, let’s see how you can bulk delete WordPress posts.

Video Tutorial

If you don’t want to watch the video tutorial, then you can continue reading the text version below. Simply use the quick links to jump straight to the method you prefer:

Method 1: Using the Bulk Actions Feature (No Plugin Required)

The easiest way to bulk delete WordPress posts is by using the bulk actions feature. This tool is built into WordPress, so you don’t need to install any extra WordPress plugins.

First, head over to Posts » All Posts. You can now check the box next to each post you want to delete.

Another option is to check the box next to ‘Title’, which selects all the WordPress posts on the current page.

You can then uncheck any posts that you don’t want to delete.

When you are happy with your selection, just open the dropdown menu that shows ‘Bulk actions’ by default, and then select ‘Move to Trash.’

Finally, click on ‘Apply’ to delete the selected posts from your WordPress blog.

WordPress will now move the selected posts to the trash.

With this method, you can delete up to 20 posts at a time. However, it is possible to bulk delete more items by customizing the WordPress admin area so that it shows more posts per page.

To do this, click on ‘Screen Options’ at the top right corner of the screen. Then, type a new number into the ‘Number of items per page’ box.

Then, simply click on the ‘Apply’ button, and WordPress will show the number of posts you typed in earlier.

You can now go ahead and bulk delete these WordPress blog posts by following the same process described above.

Bulk Delete Posts by Specific Author or Category

Sometimes, you may want to delete posts for a specific category or tag or posts written by a specific writer on your multi-author WordPress blog.

To do this, simply go to Posts » All Posts and then click on the category, tag, or author name.

This will show all the posts that have this category, tag, or author. For example, clicking on the ‘Apple News’ category will show all the posts filed under that category on your news aggregator website.

You can then bulk delete the posts by following the same process described above.

Method 2: Using the Bulk Delete Plugin (More Options)

The built-in WordPress bulk delete feature is a good solution for most websites. However, sometimes, you may want to delete posts based on specific criteria such as the post status, how many comments the post has received, or its URL.

In this case, you can use the Bulk Delete plugin. This free plugin allows you to bulk delete based on custom taxonomies, custom post types, post status, and other criteria.

First, you need to install and activate the Bulk Delete plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you must go to Bulk WP » Bulk Delete Posts to see all the different filters you can use. 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 further in the settings screen, you will find more options to select and delete posts by categories, custom taxonomies, custom post types, and more.

You can even bulk delete all WordPress comments, pages, users, and custom fields.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily bulk delete WordPress posts using these two methods. You may also want to see our list of the best plugins to improve the WordPress admin area or our guide on how to add custom dashboard widgets.

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