Help:DeleteBatch Extension
From Textpattern CMS User Documentation
The DeleteBatch extension makes it possible to delete multiple wiki pages at once. This extension has proved extremely valuable, if for no other reason, when deleting the 127 old tag pages, which otherwise would have had to be done one page at a time through a many-click process.
When installed, this extension adds a special page, special:DeleteBatch, where users with the 'deletebatch' right can delete multiple pages easily. The user can delete pages with the form directly, or by uploading a text file containing the titles and delete reasons (optional) of the targeted pages.
The extension also creates a special user group: staff (see special:ListGroupRights). Only users that are assigned to this special group will be able to use this extension, including existing wiki administrators.
User Rights Management
To add a user to the staff group:
- Go to special:UserRights and type in the username of the person you want to give rights to, then click the Edit user groups button.
- In the resulting Edit user groups fieldset, under the Groups you can change section, tick the box for staff. Save.
You can confirm the rights have been set by going to special:ListGroupRights and clicking the list of members link under the "staff" group label in the first column of the table.
Deleting Multiple Pages
- Go to special:DeleteBatch.
- Leave the first form control, Run the script as, set to delete page script. (The other option is "you" and there's no documentation what this is for.)
- Declare the pages you want to delete either in the Pages to be deleted field, or in an external text file. In both cases, you indicate a given page to be deleted by using the following line:
Title of Page|reason for deletion
Replace wiki page title (required) and reason for deletion (optional) for each entry, accordingly. - If you upload a text file, leave the Pages to be deleted field empty and simply use the Page list control to browse for -- and cue -- the file.
- Click Delete button and say "goodbye" to all those pages.
If you use the text file method, you might see a blank screen after hitting the Delete key (there's no confirmation message or return to the DeleteBatch form). However, the deletions will be made, which you can verify by going to Special:AllPages.
As usual, the pages are not truly deleted, they are simply put into archive and cleared from the wiki namespace they existed in. You can see the special:Log/delete page to trace deleted pages. A page is only truly deleted if at a later time a new page is created with the old page title, which effectively kills the old history of the former page.
