This is a quick guide to show you how to bulk change filenames in your WordPress Media Library, and create automatic 301 redirects.
This is really useful because Google may have already indexed your images, and you might have links on external websites pointing to your old image URLs. Our automatic redirects will make sure that the old links redirect to the new links and you won’t lose any traffic.
Fortunately, if you use the WP Sheet Editor – Media Library plugin, we have a great solution! We have modified our “WP Sheet Editor – Redirection” extension to also detect the file name changes, and thus avoid broken image links.
You need to follow these steps after installing the Media Library Spreadsheet:
1- Install the “Redirection” plugin
You can download the plugin here.
It allows you to manually create redirects and point users to the right pages.
2- Install our “WP Sheet Editor – Redirection” extension
This extension will add full compatibility between WP Sheet Editor and Redirection to automatically detect file name changes.
3- Change filenames and automatically create 301 redirects
Now you can use the WP Sheet Editor – Media Library plugin to edit the File Name column, and we will automatically create redirections.
Important:
If the redirects aren’t working, it might be due to your server environment. You can select your server environment following these steps:
- Go to wp-admin > Tools > Redirection > Groups page
- Edit the WP Sheet Editor group, this contains all the redirects created by our plugin
- Change the Module type from “WordPress” to “Apache” or “Nginx” depending on your server environment
Here’s an example:
