Sep 12 2025
3 Different Ways To Do Bulk Updates On WordPress

One of the strengths of WordPress is its extensibility. You can run everything from e-shops and booking systems to massive WordPress multisites from one instance of WordPress.

Another is that it’s a database and robust PHP-based programming language, which means that running a bunch of updates on a site is remarkably straightforward.

In this post, I’m going to present three different ways to bulk update WordPress.

A quick word of caution before starting to look at this: Things like misaligned fields or plugin conflicts could result in unintended results, so if you’re doing any large-scale updates, be sure to back up beforehand.

Also, for the content updates, it’s worth running a small test. Ten or so posts as a tester is a good way to start, before running it through the entire site.

1. How To Bulk Update Content On A WordPress Website

Simple Changes To Existing Content

If you want to make simple changes to existing content, such as bulk change the author, status, or taxonomies on a number of pieces of content, one thing you can do is use WordPress’ pre-existing bulk editing component.

From the edit posts/pages page, you can tick individual posts and pages and select “Edit.”

From there, you can set all posts’ categories, tags, statuses, and other information quickly and easily. Once done, click the “Update” button.

The WordPress bulk category and tag editorScreenshot from WordPress, August 2025

Please note: This will replace all categories, but tags will be added. This is probably the most common way of editing content, which you probably already know about!

Importing And Exporting Content

Let’s say you want to bulk add WordPress content on a WordPress website.

The most common version is that you want to import a set of blog posts, or indeed, you have a list of products within a spreadsheet that you want to import into a system like WooCommerce; it depends on where you’re importing from.

If you’re combining a WordPress export and importing it into another blog, the best way is to use the default WordPress Importer plugin.

If you’re moving content between WordPress sites, use the default WordPress Importer. It reads WXR (.xml) export files and can optionally download and import file attachments.

If you are using WooCommerce, then the best course of action would be to use the default WooCommerce product importer.

It’s pretty robust and can take a standard CSV, XML file, or spreadsheet and import it. You can map these fields to WooCommerce fields, which is a bit more work.

A screenshot of the WooCommerce Importer, the mapping fields page.Screenshot from WordPress, August 2025

For WooCommerce products, use the built-in Product CSV Importer/Exporter and map your columns to product fields.

Should you be importing content from a non-standard source (like a CSV or a feed), a great plugin to use is WP All Import.

For non-standard sources (CSV, XML, Excel, Google Sheets), WP All Import can map fields to any post type and even run custom PHP during import. Add-ons cover ACF, Yoast, and WooCommerce.

It’s a freemium plugin, with the premium version allowing integrations with ACF, Yoast & WooCommerce. To talk through the power of WP All Import is a blog post in itself. However, I can share a common usage.

Say you wish to update all blog posts with new standardised title tags, you can use the companion plugin WP All Export to export all post data.

Then, within Excel or Google Sheets, you can change individual values, and then use WP All Import to import the blog posts back in.

2. How To Handle Bulk Plugin Updates On A WordPress Website

Of course, behind the scenes – and one of the most common tasks with WordPress blogs – is making sure that plugins are all up to date.

Keeping plugins up to date is a crucial task in keeping your site secure and running smoothly. Thankfully, if you only have one site, it’s very easy to do a bulk update.

Log in to your WordPress site as an administrator, and under Dashboard, there’s a heading entitled “Updates.” Click it to take you to the updates screen.

The WordPress plugin updates with 18 plugins that need updating.Screenshot from WordPress, August 2025

Scroll down a bit, and you should have a list of plugins towards the bottom that need an update. Similarly to the bulk editing, there will be a checkbox next to each element.

Select all checkboxes for the plugins you wish to update (and – in all reality – you’d want to make sure you select all plugins).

Click “Update Plugins,” and then all plugins will be brought up to date!

Your site is unlikely to break even with a large number of backups. However, in the extremely unlikely event the site breaks after updating a bunch of plugins, there are ways to recover, which you can read in the article “How Do You Resolve A Plugin Conflict.” Go to the log files and deactivate the plugin via FTP.

Alternatively, here are a few other techniques to do bulk updates successfully:

  • Update in small batches (e.g. split by functionality, or by letter). Update, reload key pages, then move on.
  • Back up and test on staging before production.
  • If you use a maintenance dashboard like ManageWP, run Safe Updates (it creates a restore point, runs the updates, visually compares pages, and rolls back if something looks wrong).
  • WordPress Command Line Interface (WP-CLI) lets you preview or update plugins individually:
    • Preview: wp plugin update yoast-seo --dry-run
    • Update one: wp plugin update yoast-seo
    • Update all (use with care): wp plugin update --all

3. How To Handle Bulk Plugin Updates On Multiple WordPress Websites

That’s all fine for one WordPress site. However, if you are managing multiple WordPress sites, then it can be a bit time-consuming to handle plugin updates on multiple WordPress sites.

Thankfully, I covered this in a previous article, “How to manage multiple websites on WordPress.”

In that article, I shared a number of WordPress maintenance dashboard services that exist, which will allow you to log in and update multiple WordPress sites from one singular location.

Here are some of the most popular:

Although each of these platforms has premium offerings that vary with cost and features, they also offer plugin and theme updates for free.

I use ManageWP, so once you connect your site to ManageWP, you should see a dashboard with the number of plugin updates you need to do spread over a number of sites. Simply click “Update All” to update all plugins on all installations. Alternatively you can tick the checkboxes and “Update” to select individual plugins to install.

The ManageWP DashboardScreenshot from WordPress, August 2025.

You can also filter by sites and severity of updates within ManageWP. There is a premium option to do a “safe” update, which will allow you to run an update, check the site, and roll back if anything breaks.

There’s a good selection of ways to carry out bulk updates within WordPress. There are also command-like tools like WP CLI (mentioned above) to build scripts to run on sites. However, that is worth an article in itself.

To bulk update all plugins in WP CLI, you can use this command:

wp plugin update --all

This will update all plugins on an individual site and you can expand that to a script to run on multiple sites.

WP CLI is so powerful and really should be used for agencies to manage multiple websites quickly and easily.

Wrapping Up: Bulk Updates For A Smooth-Running WordPress Site

WordPress makes it straightforward to handle bulk updates, whether you’re tweaking content, importing products, or keeping plugins in check.

Across the built-in tools and available plugins, there’s a solution for just about every scenario. The key is to test changes in small batches and always keep a backup handy.

With a little prep, you can save hours of manual work and keep your site (or sites) running smoothly and efficiently.

More Resources:

Featured Image: GaudiLab/Shutterstock

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Sep 12 2025
Texas banned lab-grown meat. What’s next for the industry?

Last week, a legal battle over lab-grown meat kicked off in Texas. On September 1, a two-year ban on the technology went into effect across the state; the following day, two companies filed a lawsuit against state officials.

The two companies, Wildtype Foods and Upside Foods, are part of a growing industry that aims to bring new types of food to people’s plates. These products, often called cultivated meat by the industry, take live animal cells and grow them in the lab to make food products without the need to slaughter animals.

Texas joins six other US states and the country of Italy in banning these products. These legal challenges are adding barriers to an industry that’s still in its infancy and already faces plenty of challenges before it can reach consumers in a meaningful way.

The agriculture sector makes up a hefty chunk of global greenhouse-gas emissions, with livestock alone accounting for somewhere between 10% and 20% of climate pollution. Alternative meat products, including those grown in a lab, could help cut the greenhouse gases from agriculture.

The industry is still in its early days, though. In the US, just a handful of companies can legally sell products including cultivated chicken, pork fat, and salmon. Australia, Singapore, and Israel also allow a few companies to sell within their borders.

Upside Foods, which makes cultivated chicken, was one of the first to receive the legal go-ahead to sell its products in the US, in 2022. Wildtype Foods, one of the latest additions to the US market, was able to start selling its cultivated salmon in June.

Upside, Wildtype, and other cultivated-meat companies are still working to scale up production. Products are generally available at pop-up events or on special menus at high-end restaurants. (I visited San Francisco to try Upside’s cultivated chicken at a Michelin-starred restaurant a few years ago.)

Until recently, the only place you could reliably find lab-grown meat in Texas was a sushi restaurant in Austin. Otoko featured Wildtype’s cultivated salmon on a special tasting menu starting in July. (The chef told local publication Culture Map Austin that the cultivated fish tastes like wild salmon, and it was included in a dish with grilled yellowtail to showcase it side-by-side with another type of fish.)

The as-yet-limited reach of lab-grown meat didn’t stop state officials from moving to ban the technology, effective from now until September 2027.

The office of state senator Charles Perry, the author of the bill, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Neither did the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, whose president, Carl Ray Polk Jr., testified in support of the bill in a March committee hearing.

“The introduction of lab-grown meat could disrupt traditional livestock markets, affecting rural communities and family farms,” Perry said during the meeting.

In an interview with the Texas Tribune, Polk said the two-year moratorium would help the industry put checks and balances in place before the products could be sold. He also expressed concern about how clearly cultivated-meat companies will be labeling their products.

“The purpose of these bans is to try to kill the cultivated-meat industry before it gets off the ground,” said Myra Pasek, general counsel of Upside Foods, via email. The company is working to scale up its manufacturing and get the product on the market, she says, “but that can’t happen if we’re not allowed to compete in the marketplace.”

Others in the industry have similar worries. “Moratoriums on sale like this not only deny Texans new choices and economic growth, but they also send chilling signals to researchers and entrepreneurs across the country,” said Pepin Andrew Tuma, the vice president of policy and government relations for the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on alternative proteins, in a statement. (The group isn’t involved in the lawsuit.) 

One day after the moratorium took effect on September 1, Wildtype Foods and Upside Foods filed a lawsuit challenging the ban, naming Jennifer Shuford, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, among other state officials.

A lawsuit wasn’t necessarily part of the scale-up plan. “This was really a last resort for us,” says Justin Kolbeck, cofounder and CEO of Wildtype.

Growing cells to make meat in the lab isn’t easy—some companies have spent a decade or more trying to make significant amounts of a product that people want to eat. These legal battles certainly aren’t going to help. 

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

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Sep 12 2025
The Download: Trump’s impact on science, and meet our climate and energy honorees

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

How Trump’s policies are affecting early-career scientists—in their own words

Every year MIT Technology Review celebrates accomplished young scientists, entrepreneurs, and inventors from around the world in our Innovators Under 35 list. We’ve just published the 2025 edition. This year, though, the context is different: The US scientific community is under attack.

Since Donald Trump took office in January, his administration has fired top government scientists, targeted universities and academia, and made substantial funding cuts to the country’s science and technology infrastructure.

We asked our six most recent cohorts about both positive and negative impacts of the administration’s new policies. Their responses provide a glimpse into the complexities of building labs, companies, and careers in today’s political climate. Read the full story.

—Eileen Guo & Amy Nordrum

This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s “America Undone” series, examining how the foundations of US success in science and innovation are currently under threat. You can read the rest here.

This Ethiopian entrepreneur is reinventing ammonia production

In the small town in Ethiopia where he grew up, Iwnetim Abate’s family had electricity, but it was unreliable. So, for several days each week when they were without power, Abate would finish his homework by candlelight.

Growing up without the access to electricity that many people take for granted shaped the way Abate thinks about energy issues. Today, the 32-year old is an assistant professor at MIT in the department of materials science and engineering. 

Part of his research focuses on sodium-ion batteries, which could be cheaper than the lithium-based ones that typically power electric vehicles and grid installations. He’s also pursuing a new research path, examining how to harness the heat and pressure under the Earth’s surface to make ammonia, a chemical used in fertilizer and as a green fuel. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

Abate is one of the climate and energy honorees on our 35 Innovators Under 35 list for 2025. Meet the rest of our climate and energy innovators here, and the full list—including our innovator of the year—here. 

Texas banned lab-grown meat. What’s next for the industry?

Last week, a legal battle over lab-grown meat kicked off in Texas. On September 1, a two-year ban on the technology went into effect across the state; the following day, two companies filed a lawsuit against state officials.

The two companies, Wildtype Foods and Upside Foods, are part of a growing industry that aims to bring new types of food to people’s plates. These products, often called cultivated meat by the industry, take live animal cells and grow them in the lab to make food products without the need to slaughter animals.

Texas joins six other US states and the country of Italy in banning these products—adding barriers to an industry that’s still in its infancy, and already faces plenty of challenges before it can reach consumers in a meaningful way. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Videos of Charlie Kirk’s shooting are everywhere on social media
It demonstrates just how poorly equipped platforms are to stop the spread of violent material. (NYT $)
+ Why social media can’t get on top of its graphic video problem. (NY Mag $)
+ Here’s how platforms say they’ll treat the videos. (The Verge)
+ Far-right communities reacted to Kirk’s murder by calling for more violence. (Wired $)

2 NASA has uncovered the clearest sign of life on Mars to date
Some unusual rocks may have been formed by ancient microbes. (WP $)
+ Scientists are very excited by the possibility they were created by living organisms. (New Scientist $)

3 A California bill to regulate AI companion chatbots is close to passing
It would become the first US state to make chatbot operators legally accountable. (TechCrunch)
+ Wall Street is only now starting to worry about “AI psychosis.” (Insider $)
+ AI companions are the final stage of digital addiction, and lawmakers are taking aim. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Larry Ellison briefly overtook Elon Musk as the world’s richest person
His firm Oracle reported far better-than expected results. (The Guardian)
+ Oracle is riding high on a surge of demand for its data centers. (BBC)
+ But its continued success will depend on its ability to deliver promised hardware. (FT $)

5 The ousted CDC director is set to testify before the US Senate
RFK Jr repeatedly called Susan Monarez a liar during a hearing last week. (Ars Technica)
+ The backlash to Kennedy’s actions is intensifying. (NY Mag $)

6 A new system can pinpoint the best spot to hit an asteroid
Making destroying them a whole lot safer, in theory. (New Scientist $)
+ Meet the researchers testing the “Armageddon” approach to asteroid defense. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Saudi Arabia is building some of the world’s biggest solar farms ☀
It needs plenty more electricity for its new resorts and data centers. (WSJ $)
+ AI is changing the grid. Could it help more than it harms? (MIT Technology Review)

8 CRISPR could help to combat diabetes
Scientists successfully implanted insulin-producing edited cells into a man’s pancreas. (Wired $)
+ A US court just put ownership of CRISPR back in play. (MIT Technology Review)

9 How to save oyster reefs 🦪
Conservation projects are helping to rebuild destroyed populations. (Knowable Magazine)
+ How the humble sea creature could hold the key to restoring coastal waters. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Bluesky is not as fun as it should be
It fosters a culture of reactionary scolding that’s driving some users back to X. (New Yorker $)

Quote of the day

“For the love of God and Charlie’s family, just stop.”

—A poster on X begs fellow social media users to stop sharing images and videos of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder online, the Associated Press reports.

One more thing

This giant microwave may change the future of war

Imagine: China deploys hundreds of thousands of autonomous drones in the air, on the sea, and under the water—all armed with explosive warheads or small missiles. These machines descend in a swarm toward military installations on Taiwan and nearby US bases, and over the course of a few hours, a single robotic blitzkrieg overwhelms the US Pacific force before it can even begin to fight back.

The proliferation of cheap drones means just about any group with the wherewithal to assemble and launch a swarm could wreak havoc, no expensive jets or massive missile installations required.

The US armed forces are now hunting for a solution—and they want it fast. One of these is microwaves: high-powered electronic devices that push out kilowatts of power to zap the circuits of a drone as if it were the tinfoil you forgot to take off your leftovers when you heated them up. Read the full story.

—Sam Dean

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)

+ They’ve finally done it—the Stephen King novel they claimed was impossible to adapt is coming to the big screen.
+ Do you have more zucchinis than you know what to do with? This tasty bread is one solution.
+ How The Penguin’s production designers transformed NYC into spooky, dirty Gotham.
+ This fascinating website shows you what today’s date looks like on dozens of different calendars and clocks.

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Sep 12 2025
Partnering with generative AI in the finance function

Generative AI has the potential to transform the finance function. By taking on some of the more mundane tasks that can occupy a lot of time, generative AI tools can help free up capacity for more high-value strategic work. For chief financial officers, this could mean spending more time and energy on proactively advising the business on financial strategy as organizations around the world continue to weather ongoing geopolitical and financial uncertainty.

CFOs can use large language models (LLMs) and generative AI tools to support everyday tasks like generating quarterly reports, communicating with investors, and formulating strategic summaries, says Andrew W. Lo, Charles E. and Susan T. Harris professor and director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “LLMs can’t replace the CFO by any means, but they can take a lot of the drudgery out of the role by providing first drafts of documents that summarize key issues and outline strategic priorities.”

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

Generative AI is also showing promise in functions like treasury, with use cases including cash, revenue, and liquidity forecasting and management, as well as automating contracts and investment analysis. However, challenges still remain for generative AI to contribute to forecasting due to the mathematical limitations of LLMs. Regardless, Deloitte’s analysis of its 2024 State of Generative AI in the Enterprise survey found that one-fifth (19%) of finance organizations have already adopted generative AI in the finance function.

Despite return on generative AI investments in finance functions being 8 points below expectations so far for surveyed organizations (see Figure 1), some finance departments appear to be moving ahead with investments. Deloitte’s fourth-quarter 2024 North American CFO Signals survey found that 46% of CFOs who responded expect deployment or spend on generative AI in finance to increase in the next 12 months (see Figure 2). Respondents cite the technology’s potential to help control costs through self-service and automation and free up workers for higher-level, higher-productivity tasks as some of the top benefits of the technology.

“Companies have used AI on the customer-facing side of the house for a long time, but in finance, employees are still creating documents and presentations and emailing them around,” says Robyn Peters, principal in finance transformation at Deloitte Consulting LLP. “Largely, the human-centric experience that customers expect from brands in retail, transportation, and hospitality haven’t been pulled through to the finance organization. And there’s no reason we cannot do that—and, in fact, AI makes it a lot easier to do.”

If CFOs think they can just sit by for the next five years and watch how AI evolves, they may lose out to more nimble competitors that are actively experimenting in the space. Future finance professionals are growing up using generative AI tools too. CFOs should consider reimagining what it looks like to be a successful finance professional, in collaboration with AI.

Download the report.

This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff. It was researched, designed, and written by human writers, editors, analysts, and illustrators. AI tools that may have been used were limited to secondary production processes that passed thorough human review.

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Sep 12 2025
We can’t “make American children healthy again” without tackling the gun crisis

Note for readers: This newsletter discusses gun violence, a raw and tragic issue in America. It was already in progress on Wednesday when a school shooting occurred at Evergreen High School in Colorado and Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University. 

Earlier this week, the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again movement released a strategy for improving the health and well-being of American children. The report was titled—you guessed it—Make Our Children Healthy Again.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who leads the Department of Health and Human Services, and his colleagues are focusing on four key aspects of child health: diet, exercise, chemical exposure, and overmedicalization.

Anyone who’s been listening to RFK Jr. posturing on health and wellness won’t be surprised by these priorities. And the first two are pretty obvious. On the whole, American children should be eating more healthily. And they should be getting more exercise.

But there’s a glaring omission. The leading cause of death for American children and teenagers isn’t ultraprocessed food or exposure to some chemical. It’s gun violence. 

Yesterday’s news of yet more high-profile shootings at schools in the US throws this disconnect into even sharper relief. Experts believe it is time to treat gun violence in the US as what it is: a public health crisis.

I live in London, UK, with my husband and two young children. We don’t live in a particularly fancy part of the city—in one recent ranking of London boroughs from most to least posh, ours came in at 30th out of 33. I do worry about crime. But I don’t worry about gun violence.

That changed when I temporarily moved my family to the US a couple of years ago. We rented the ground-floor apartment of a lovely home in Cambridge, Massachusetts—a beautiful area with good schools, pastel-colored houses, and fluffy rabbits hopping about. It wasn’t until after we’d moved in that my landlord told me he had guns in the basement.

My daughter joined the kindergarten of a local school that specialized in music, and we took her younger sister along to watch the kids sing songs about friendship. It was all so heartwarming—until we noticed the school security officer at the entrance carrying a gun.

Later in the year, I received an email alert from the superintendent of the Cambridge Public Schools. “At approximately 1:45 this afternoon, a Cambridge Police Department Youth Officer assigned to Cambridge Rindge and Latin School accidentally discharged their firearm while using a staff bathroom inside the school,” the message began. “The school day was not disrupted.”

These experiences, among others, truly brought home to me the cultural differences over firearms between the US and the UK (along with most other countries). For the first time, I worried about my children’s exposure to them. I banned my children from accessing parts of the house. I felt guilty that my four-year-old had to learn what to do if a gunman entered her school. 

But it’s the statistics that are the most upsetting.

In 2023, 46,728 people died from gun violence in the US, according to a report published in June by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. That includes both homicides and suicides, and it breaks down to 128 deaths per day, on average. The majority of those who die from gun violence are adults. But the figures for children are sickening, too. In 2023, 2,566 young people died from gun violence. Of those, 234 were under the age of 10.

Gun death rates among children have more than doubled since 2013. Firearms are involved in more child deaths than cancer or car crashes.

Many other children survive gun violence with nonfatal—but often life-changing—injuries. And the impacts are felt beyond those who are physically injured. Witnessing gun violence or hearing gunshots can understandably cause fear, sadness, and distress.  

That’s worth bearing in mind when you consider that there have been 434 school shootings in the US since Columbine in 1999. The Washington Post estimates that 397,000 students have experienced gun violence at school in that period. Another school shooting took place at Evergreen High School in Colorado on Wednesday, adding to that total.

“Being indirectly exposed to gun violence takes its toll on our mental health and children’s ability to learn,” says Daniel Webster, Bloomberg Professor of American Health at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions in Baltimore.

The MAHA report states that “American youth face a mental health crisis,” going on to note that “suicide deaths among 10- to 24-year-olds increased by 62% from 2007 to 2021” and that “suicide is now the leading cause of death in teens aged 15-19.” What it doesn’t say is that around half of these suicides involve guns.

“When you add all these dimensions, [gun violence is] a very huge public health problem,” says Webster.

Researchers who study gun violence have been saying the same thing for years. And in 2024, then US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared it a public health crisis. “We don’t have to subject our children to the ongoing horror of firearm violence in America,” Murthy said in a statement at the time. Instead, he argued, we should tackle the problem using a public health approach.

Part of that approach involves identifying who is at the greatest risk and offering support to lower that risk, says Webster. Young men who live in poor communities tend to have the highest risk of gun violence, he says, as do those who experience crisis or turmoil. Trying to mediate conflicts or limit access to firearms, even temporarily, can help lower the incidence of gun violence, he says.

There’s an element of social contagion, too, adds Webster. Shooting begets more shooting. He likens it to the outbreak of an infectious disease. “When more people get vaccinated … infection rates go down,” he says. “Almost exactly the same thing happens with gun violence.”

But existing efforts are already under threat. The Trump administration has eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for organizations working to reduce gun violence.

Webster thinks the MAHA report has “missed the mark” when it comes to the health and well-being of children in the US. “This document is almost the polar opposite to how many people in public health think,” he says. “We have to acknowledge that injuries and deaths from firearms are a big threat to the health and safety of children and adolescents.”

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.

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