InfoRapid Multiple Files Search and Replace Across Multiple Files

While I was frantically working on importing my huge static HTML website into the WordPress database, I used several tools that made the process easier, and one of those tools was InfoRapid’s Search and Replace Freeware Utility.

While WordPress now has a bunch of wonderfully powerful import scripts that come with WordPress, there is still no simple or easy method to import static HTML files into the WordPress database. The challenge I had to overcome was to strip away all the HTML tags to leave just the core of the post title, content, etc., and then import all the text into a single file similar to the mt-import for importing into WordPress from Movable Type. InfoRapid’s Search and Replace Freeware Utility made the process so much easier.

The program will search through multiple files including text, html, php, WordPerfect, and Word, and search and replace any text element within the files. You can do a global search and replace, or have it pause and ask if this is what you want to replace during the process. It’s simple and easy to use, though I do with they would continue work on it, because it could be a bit easier to use. It was last updated in 2003, but it still works like a charm.

I used the program a lot during the import phase into the WordPress database, but I’ve found some other uses upon occasion that have really helped me.

During the import process, I could search for massive redundant code throughout the entire site, like the HTML tags of DOCTYPE, HTML, BODY, and specific blocks of layout tags. Within a few minutes, over a thousand HTML files had been searched and replaced throughout. Wow.

Before moving my website over to WordPress, I used InfoRapid to do massive search and replaces of code across my website’s HTML pages. That’s how changes got made to web pages in the old days when every page was just a page and not a page generated out of a database. If you wanted to change the CSS ID from “text” to “content”, you had to search and replace through multiple files in order to change every page on your website. Thank goodness for PHP and MySQL! And WordPress. Now, I just have to change one template file, not hundreds or thousands of files.

When we changed our website domain name, after many years of debate, InfoRapid again allowed us to plow through all our web files and change the name and links pain free. The same could apply to authors who write their books by chapter files rather than the whole book in one file. Decide to change the name of a character, you don’t have to open every file and make the change, just use InfoRapid Search and Replace to go through all the files and make the changes.

I’ve also used InfoRapid Search and Replace to find code in my PHP files. Cleaning up my 404 Page Not Found Errors, that come naturally with a major change in domain names as well as switching from static HTML to WordPress, I would find many link errors with text I couldn’t associate with a template file, plugin, or in the database. This happened a lot early on with links to graphics. I’d use Windows File Search to search for the text in the PHP files and come up blank sometimes. With InfoRapid Search and Replace, a file is a file is a file and it just digs in and finds the text for me when Windows couldn’t. Then I could easily fix the errant link and it would be gone from the 404 error list.

I’m sure you can come up with many uses for a search and replace program that searches and replaces across multiple files. I’m having trouble now trying to find any program that will allow search and replacing multiple lines within a single document like WordPerfect does. InfoRapid will, but it feels like overkill to only search through a single file. Any suggestions on a text editor that allows searching and replacing multiple lines of text?

---

Site Search Tags: wordpress, import, inforapid, search+and+replace, search, replace, tools, web, multiple, files, text, database
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen