DateSweep – Bulk Update Post & Page Dates

Description

DateSweep refreshes the published and/or modified dates of your content in bulk. New dates are distributed randomly across a range you choose, so the result looks natural — and every run can be previewed first and undone afterwards.

Use it to bulk-change post dates, update the published or modified date across pages and custom post types, or bulk-edit comment dates — all from one screen, with a dry-run preview and one-click undo.

Typical use cases

• Pre-launch freshness pass — you built a new site from an older template or a copy of an existing site, and everything still carries dates from years ago. One run on the “All content” tab (optionally with drafts included and both dates set equal) makes the whole site look current before launch.
• After an import or migration — imported content often ends up with a single identical date on every post, or wrong dates from a timezone mix-up. Spread realistic dates across a chosen range in one pass.
• Content maintenance for SEO — you reviewed and batch-edited older articles and want their modified dates to reflect that work naturally over the past weeks instead of one suspicious spike.
• Comments that match — after an import, comments dated before their own posts look broken. The Comments tab redates them plausibly (a comment is never dated before its post).

How it works

Pick a tab (a post type, Comments, or All content), choose the range to distribute dates within, optionally filter by taxonomy, status or specific pages, and choose which date field to update. Preview (dry run) shows current → proposed dates before anything is written. Runs are processed in batches of 100 over AJAX with a live progress bar, so even very large sites finish without PHP timeouts. Before each batch is written, the previous dates are snapshotted — your most recent run can always be restored with one click from the Recent runs list.

Features

• Batched AJAX processing with a live progress bar — works on sites with tens of thousands of posts without PHP timeouts.
• All public post types — posts, pages and custom post types each get their own tab, plus a Comments tab.
• Filter by any taxonomy (categories, tags, custom taxonomies) with AND/OR relation, or pick specific pages.
• Choose the field: modified date, published date, or both set equal.
• Safety guard: never sets a modified date earlier than the published date (the classic plugin’s known flaw).
• Comments stay plausible: a comment is never dated before its parent post.
• No external CDNs — native date pickers, vanilla JavaScript, everything loaded locally.
• Undo built in: every run records the previous dates first, and your most recent run can be restored with one click.
• Hardened: capability checks, nonces, full input sanitization and output escaping, prepared SQL statements, object-cache invalidation after every update.
• Developer friendly: actions and filters for every stage (datesweep_post_dates_updated, datesweep_collected_post_ids, datesweep_new_timestamp, datesweep_form_rows and more).

DateSweep Pro

The DateSweep Pro add-on extends the free plugin with scheduled automatic refreshes, a 10-run undo history, 100-row dry-run previews, ACF date-field support, age targeting and IndexNow submission.