WordPress allows you to upload and display a variety of media file types like images, music, and videos. But when you delete the post, all of the files attached to that specific post are left orphaned in your media library causing an undeserved load on your website. Since these files are of no more use, you may use a plugin for automatically deleting such images.

Earlier, you have learned about deleting unattached images from your WordPress media library. Now in this lesson, you will learn about automatically deleting attached files when their post, page, or post type is removed.

How To Automatically Delete Image Attachments When Any Post Is Deleted In WordPress?

Autoremove Attachments plugin keeps your media library clean by removing all media files attached as attachments to a post, page, or custom post type when the parent post is deleted. Hence, you don’t have to manually track down and remove orphaned files that remain on the server.

To start using the plugin simply log in to your WordPress site and follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Plugins -> Add New section
2. Search and install the ‘Autoremove Attachments’ plugin

There are no configuration options to set. Upon activation, the plugin automatically starts working and it automatically removes child attachments when a parent post, page, or custom post type is deleted.

The Compatibility With Other Plugins

The ‘Autoremove Attachments’ plugin is compatible with WooCommerce i.e. WordPress Ecommerce plugin, Easy Digital Downloads plugin, and all plugins that work within the WordPress system.

Make Sure

That you are not using the same media files in multiple posts or you will end up missing images from other posts on your WordPress website. If you need to use the same images in addition to this plugin then you must re-upload such images for reusing them on other posts.

Another important thing you should know is files are deleted when the parent post, page, or custom post type is permanently deleted so a soft delete that moves the content to the trash does not trigger attachment deletion. Hence, in order to delete the attached media files, you will have to permanently delete the post from the trash bin.

The lesson guides you on how you can bulk delete anything including revisions, attachments, users, meta fields, posts, pages, custom post types, taxonomies, private content, public content, content older or newer than a given date, content by user roles, drafts, pending, scheduled, etc on your WordPress Website.

Whether your WordPress website is flooded with spam user registrations or you have accidentally imported sample content from some theme or plugin. Whatsoever may be the reason, you can bulk delete anything in WordPress in a few easy clicks.

The “Bulk Delete” is free WordPress plugin that enables you to efficiently manage and delete various types of content (in bulk) from your WordPress website. It’s especially useful for website administrators, content managers, and site owners who need to remove a large number of posts, pages, users, comments, or other types of content from their websites quickly and easily.

The Main Features Of Bulk Delete WordPress Plugin

The plugin simplifies the process of cleaning up your WordPress site or managing content in large quantities.

1. Versatile Content Deletion: The plugin gives you options to delete various types of content, including posts, pages, custom post types, media, comments, users, and more. This flexibility allows you to target specific types of content that you want to remove.
2. Filtering and Selection: The plugin offers advanced filtering options, allowing you to narrow down the content you want to delete based on criteria such as post status, post type, categories, tags, custom fields, date range, and more.
3. Scheduled Deletion: You can schedule content deletion to occur at a specific date and time. This is useful if you want to automate content removal on a regular basis, such as deleting old posts or expired listings.
4. Safe Deletion Process: The plugin includes safety measures to prevent accidental deletions. It usually asks for confirmation before performing bulk deletions to ensure you don’t inadvertently remove valuable content.
5. Preview Before Deletion: Some versions of the plugin allow you to preview the list of content that will be deleted based on your filters before you execute the deletion process.
6. Logging and Reports: The plugin might log the deletion activities, providing you with a record of what was deleted, when, and by whom. This can be helpful for maintaining an audit trail of content removal.
7. Custom Post Type Support: If you have custom post types on your WordPress site, the plugin often supports deleting these as well, giving you control over non-standard content types.
8. User Role Permissions: The plugin might allow you to configure permissions based on user roles, ensuring that only authorized users can perform bulk deletions.
9. Regular Updates: Depending on the developer, the plugin might receive regular updates to ensure compatibility with the latest WordPress versions and security patches.

At the same time, you should also know that there’s a plugin called ‘Database Reset‘ that allows you to clean up your website in one click, so if you are looking up for something to reset your whole website then ‘Database Reset’ plugin can be an alternative option for you. Else ‘Bulk Delete’ plugin is great for cleaning up a selective group of items.

How Does Bulk Delete Plugin Work?

Whenever you try to delete some tag, category, or any custom taxonomy in WordPress, only the term is deleted. Deleting taxonomy terms and posts in a taxonomy are two different things. By default, deleting in bulk takes a lot of time and sometimes on shared hostings it also causes PHP memory issues resulting in Internal Server and Resource Usage Errors on your website.

But when you use the ‘Bulk Delete’ plugin, the process of bulk deleting by filtering posts, pages, custom post types, users, etc under your conditions becomes easier.

The plugin enables you to delete the content on the basis of the following filters:

• Delete posts by category, tag, custom taxonomy, custom post type, by URL, delete all draft posts, all pending posts, all private posts, all scheduled posts, all trashed content
• All given options support these filters – Post date greater than X day, less than X days, delete only public posts or private posts, restrict deletion to first N posts, delete content permanently, or just move to trash
• Deleting pages – all published pages, all draft pages, all pending pages, all private pages, all scheduled pages.
• Deleting post revisions – You can delete all post revisions
• Delete users based on user role or who have not logged in in the last X days
• Deleting Meta Fields – Delete Post meta fields, Comment meta fields, User meta fields
• Deleting other items such as Jetpack Contact Form Messages

These are the free plugin options. It also supports a number of premium add-on features, such as you can schedule the deletion automatically, bulk deleting posts with duplicate titles, and much more.

How To Use Bulk Delete Plugin In WordPress?

Login to your WordPress admin area dashboard and navigate to Plugins -> Add New page to find and install the Bulk Delete plugin. Upon activation, the plugin adds a new admin menu ‘Bulk Delete’ on your admin area dashboard.

The menu link takes you to a page from where you can delete any kind of content in bulk. So all you got to do is navigate to this page and delete whatever you don’t want on your website.

It is critical to exercise caution when using the “Bulk Delete” plugin, specifically if you’re dealing with content that cannot be easily recovered. So it becomes very important for you to make sure to have a backup of your website before performing any actions and ensure what you are going to do with this plugin.

Tags and categories in WordPress can be extended to pages. By default, WordPress offers you tags and categories for posts but by activating a plugin you can extend the functionality to pages in your WordPress Website.

There are several plugins that let you create new post types and their custom taxonomies and there are also some plugins that let you assign new taxonomies to posts, pages, and other post types. But this lesson guides you on how you can simply activate tags and categories on pages without manually creating new taxonomies.

Simply navigate to Plugin -> Add New page on your WordPress admin area dashboard to find and install Post Tags and Categories for Pages plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin automatically activates a function that enables post tags and categories for pages and it also adds the stock WordPress categories for all of your pages. Adding stock means now your website pages will also show up in the archive queries just like posts.

You can create and manage tags and categories in the same way you do for posts. New tags and categories can either be created from the page edit screen or from the Pages -> Categories and Pages -> Tags page on your admin area dashboard. There’s another plugin called Pages with category and tag is also an alternative option for enabling tags and categories on pages.