Running one action across many sites

Anything you can do to a site, you can usually do to a list of them.

Running one

Sites → select the sites, or pick a group → Actions. Choose the action, read the summary of what it will do to how many sites, and confirm.

Available in bulk: WordPress core, theme and plugin updates; PHP version changes; cache clears; malware scans; backup runs; search-and-replace across the database; plugin install and removal; and the Zinn® plugin settings.

It runs in the background, and you can leave

Bulk work is queued and runs durably: closing the tab does not stop it, and a failure on one site does not stop the others. The run's own screen shows each site's state as it lands.

Search and replace deserves a paragraph of its own

Changing a string across a network — an old domain, a tracking ID, a phone number — is a database operation and is not undoable by clicking back. It always takes a backup first, and it shows you a dry-run count of how many rows would change before it changes any.

⭐ Read the dry-run number. If you expect a handful and it says forty thousand, your search string is matching something you did not mean, and that is exactly what the preview is for.

When something fails

The run's screen lists the sites that failed with the reason. Re-running the action only touches the ones that did not succeed.