Extension:MassEditRegex

The MassEditRegex extension allows administrators to perform a single edit across multiple pages in one step, by running a regular expression over the content of each page. This is well suited to performing simple edits such as renaming a template, adding pages to a category, or correcting typos (all of which can be done in the same edit operation by supplying multiple regular expressions.)

Usage
Once the extension has been installed and permission masseditregex to use MassEditRegex has been given, go to "Special:MassEditRegex" and fill out the edit form (see [[Media:MassEditRegex.png|screenshot]]). Familiarity with regular expressions is required to use this extension.

Features

 * New in version 8.0.0: Page iteration can be done on the client side, so PHP maximum execution time is no longer an issue when editing large numbers of pages.
 * Transform each page using one or more regular expressions in a single step
 * Edits appear as "bot" so they don't show up in the normal edit list (unless the user chooses to show bot edits)
 * Only users with the masseditregex permission can perform changes
 * A new 'edit all' tab appears on category pages and on Special:WhatLinksHere, for editing all listed pages at once
 * Pages to edit can be specified as:
 * A list of page names
 * A list of page name prefixes (e.g. "Test" will match pages called "Testing" and "Tested")
 * A list of categories (all pages within the categories will be edited)
 * A list of backlinks (pages edited are those linking to the ones in the list)

Configuration
The user right "masseditregex" will have to be set for an existing user group, e.g. "sysop" or preferably for a new user group:

Bugs / Known Issues

 * Server-side execution is the default as it (should) be faster. However editing large numbers of pages will cause server timeouts due to PHP limits on script execution time.  To work around this (and perhaps to get better feedback on progress) you can tick 'execute in browser' to have the job tracking done on the client-side.  This should mean timeouts are no longer a problem.