Skip to main content

Revert Multiple Posts To Draft Status

Some blog owners, needing to take large amounts of post content offline, unsuccessfully try to use the Posts menu to "Revert to draft" posts, in quantity.

Selecting all posts displayed, they click on "Revert to draft", and are given the bad news.
You cannot modify more than 50 entries at once.
This is annoying - but does not have to be terminal, to whatever project was underway.

You can only revert 50 posts at a time, using the Posts menu.

The Posts menu will only change 50 posts in one action.
Given this limitation, change the page size, to show 50 posts / display page. Once that's done, you can "Select all" in a display page, and "Revert to draft" - and revert all 50 posts, displayed.

Blogger is full of limitations. This limitation does not have to mean dropping your project, though.


You can make a record of the posts, before you revert them to draft.
Don't revert to draft, with no chance of knowing what you had. Make a copy of the Blogger generated sitemap, and save it in a safe place. Having some way to research post URLs and publish dates may be useful.

With the sitemap saved safely, do what you need to do.


I normally display 100 posts / display page. The Posts menu will only process 50 posts / change.



So, change the Posts display page size, to 50.



Now, we only display 50 posts / display page.



Use the "select all" box (which, on mouse over, shows "Select all comments"), to select all posts in the display page.



And, with all displayed posts selected, hit "Revert to draft".


With more than 50 posts involved, page to the next display, hit "Select all" again, and repeat.

Republishing will require post by post changes - so be prepared.
When you re publish, it's going to be another project. Unless you were very lucky, some posts will have been reverted in a different month from when they were originally published - and the re publishing will likely not be in the same month.

You're either going to have to change each post publish date back, one by one, to the original - or you're going to have to add custom redirects, one by one, to resolve the "404 Not Found" errors, caused by the new URLs.

This is where the copied sitemap becomes useful - so you can, orderly plan the re publishing effort. Or, plan to use Search Console regularly, watching for "404 Not Found" errors caused by the re publishing.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I'm in the process of cleaning up my blogs, and to be sure I don't run into errors and things, I'm manually updating them one by one. Prior to this, I made an index on a page on my blog. This way I can see the current live version, open another window and edit accordingly. It's a lot of work, but I know it will be worth it in the long run. Unfortunately, some posts that should go back to draft are remaining live until I update them, but that's okay, because when this big project is finished, my blog will be so much better.

The one thing I'm very uncertain about is how my own page views in this process are signaling Google. I hope they don't penalize me for looking at my pages this much, because once the work is finished, I shouldn't have to look at my pages much at all...until the next time I do updates to make sure everything is still in order, that is. A big blogging learning curve took hold recently, and I know I need to clean up my blogs.
Nitecruzr said…
Hi M.J.,

Thanks for the observation.

I don't think Google Search, in general, is likely to object to your loading up your page view count - though if you have AdSense, that could be another matter.

Presumably, if you asked this question in AdSense Support Forum, you would be given instructions to install the Google Publisher Toolbar.

Barring AdSense being involved, I'd say just work on your blog - and as you gett actual readers, the noise from your self clicking will be similar to referer spam noise - inconsequential.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2013/05/referer-spam-is-noticed-more-by-newer.html

Popular posts from this blog

Adding A Link To Your Blog Post

Occasionally, you see a very odd, cryptic complaint I just added a link in my blog, but the link vanished! No, it wasn't your imagination.

Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".