When you install a WordPress site, the system automatically creates an Administrator user account and assigns it a User ID. This is done to allow you to log into the Administration tool to manage your blog installation. Unfortunately you are not allowed to select the User ID that is created. Furthermore you are not allowed to change it once it is created. Normally that would not be a big deal but if you happen to be migrating from an existing blog, you end up with one of two scenarios.

First you may create new User IDs for the authors of entries being migrated at which point you end up having to manage multiple accounts if you are not careful. The other scenario is that you map your existing WordPress Admin user to the migrated posts, which too ended up being a little weird as the older posts had the previous user name but the WordPress site has the new User ID. Neither of these is optimal and so I went looking for an alternative.

What I found was a WordPress plug-in written by Janis Elsts appropriately named Change Admin Username. This simple plug-in allows you to change the User ID of the WordPress administrator without resorting to manipulating the database files directly.

The plug-in installs like any standard plug-in and adds a new entry to the Users section of the Administration Dashboard. This new entry is called Change Username. Selecting this item from the User menu will display the current Username of the administrator and gives you an input field where you can enter the new name you want to use for the User ID for the administrator account. Once you have entered the new User ID you simply click the Save Changes button and the database files are modified with the new ID.

For anyone who has migrated from another system or just does not like the User ID assigned by default by WordPress, this plug-in allows you to set it to something more meaningful to you. By changing the default User ID you also close one potential security hole by now requiring a would-be hacker to have to guess the User ID as well as the password. That in my mind is a very good thing.

It never fails; no matter how well I plan or no matter how good the migration tool is, there always seems to be some sort of data issue that can best be solved through entry deletion. The problem of course is that in most of these systems deletion is an all or nothing kind of proposition. Rarely do the developers take into consideration that you may only want to delete certain types of entries.

This was the case with WordPress as well. I was able to delete individual blog entries or through a database manipulation I could delete everything but there wasn’t much in between these two extremes.

What I wanted was the ability to do a bulk delete based on certain criteria. After some research and recommendations, I settled on a plug-in written by Sudar appropriately named Bulk Delete. This plug-in will allow you to delete blog posts based on category or even keyword.

Obviously this kind of plug-in can be extremely dangerous and should be used with extreme caution. Plug-in installation is through the WordPress Administration tool through the Plug-in section. After uploading the files a new setting page is created under the Settings heading. It is aptly named Bulk Delete.

The page will allow you to select what types of entries you want to delete. Besides category or keyword, you can also delete all drafts, all revisions, all pending posts, all scheduled posts, or all posts total. The plug-in also allows you to restrict the deletion to posts older than a certain number of days.

The plug-in works as advertised and can be very useful not only for deleting posts that have been migrated but for cleaning up a blog eliminating old posts or posts associated with a specific category or keyword.

This is a valuable plug-in that every administrator should be aware of to make pruning and cleaning of a blog as painless as possible. As always I recommend making a back-up of your database files before running tools such as this. You just never know what might happen when doing a bulk deletion of records within a database.

After migrating nearly 2,000 posts from Movable Type to WordPress, I wanted to go through and check a sample of posts to verify that all of the data had transferred correctly. I thought this was going to be a relatively simple task. I went to the WordPress Administration tool and selected Edit under the Posts category. The result was a listing of 15 of the most current posts and a pagination system for the remainder of the posts.

I selected the first post on the list and the system took me to the editor. Within the editor I was able to make whatever changes I wanted to the blog entry and republish the post to update it on the site. I then began searching for a link that would take me to the next post. Oddly, I could not find one.

It seems rather odd that a system as comprehensive as WordPress would forget something as simple and mundane as a previous and next navigation link for moving between posts. At first I thought perhaps I had just neglected to set a configuration switch. I mean come on, who would build a system that didn’t have proper navigation. Surely the WordPress developers did not expect a blog entry to publish changes to an entry then click back to the edit screen to select the next or previous entry, would they? After a little research I can safely say, that is the exact user experience that they developed.

It did not take too long for me to realize that this had to change. I had way too many blog entries to review to spend time navigating several screens in order to reach my destination. I immediately began looking for an alternative that would bring about a better user experience.

After a little research and a few Google and WordPress searches I found a plug-in that would do just what I needed. Scott Reilly authored a plug-in aptly named Admin Post Navigation. I downloaded this plug-in and installed it.

Installation was straightforward; from the WordPress Administration tool I clicked the Plug-In section and clicked the Add New link. From there I clicked Upload and Browse and added the file I had downloaded from Scott’s web site.

The plug-in has no special settings it just works. In the Edit Post screen two new links are added to the right of the heading; one to take you to the previous entry and one to take you to the next entry. If you happen to be on the first post the Previous link does not show up. Likewise if you are on the last entry the Next link is not visible.

This little plug-in has saved me keystrokes and restored a richer user experience for the administrator. It’s funny how a simple solution such as this can eliminate stress and frustration from the day-to-day administration of a blog.