Making word replacement permanent

[PietvWdV]

Hi!

I have been searching but to no avail

I am using SMF2.0 RC3

Here is my dilema: We are currently doing a much needed re-structuring of some of our download file structures. This will require the changing of thousands of download links.

I can use the censored words function to change aspects of the link's adress. For example, and old download link may be

http://www.vanwykdevries.com/aflaai/WIP/Cirx_CP_Me-262.zip [nofollow]

By entering the word aflaai/WIP in the censored words, to be replaced by sasdl/WIP, I can sucessfully change all instances of this link and others in that directory to

http://www.vanwykdevries.com/sasdl/WIP/Cirx_CP_Me-262.zip [nofollow]

But, it is not a permanent change it seems. The moment I remove the word from the censored words list, it all reverts back to the old links.

How can I make these changes permanent? So that I dont have to have this one-time operation sit in my censored words list for all time, adding extra to the load.

I just want to be able to run a one time search and replace operation.

I am sure we did it in the past once or twice when we moved servers, but that was long ago and probably with another version of SMF. I cannot for the life of me remember, or find such a function at the moment. It may even be that at that stage the forum was small enough to do it manually, but unfortunately , that is no longer the case, I am talking here about litteraly thousands of edits.

Any advice would be welcome, and if I have missed some basic function, please forgive.

All the best
Piet

[Oya]

theres no function to do it in smf however you can run it as a database query

BACKUP FIRST

then in phpmyadmin go to your database and run
UPDATE smf_messages SET body = REPLACE(body, 'aflaai/WIP', 'sasdl/WIP');

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Hi PietvWdV, did Oya's advice help you? Do you still need assistance on this?

[PietvWdV]

Hi

I am not bold enough to work with the database just yet, so i did not try this.
But thanx for the advice.

Currently I am not doing badly without this function, so it's all good.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Ok, if you don't need further assistance on this at the moment - please consider marking the topic solved
If you need to, you can just reopen it later on.