Media Rename — OrbitStem

Anything. Accents, spaces, dots and symbols are cleaned up for you, and the rename panel shows the result as you type: Café Paris 2.0 is saved as Cafe-Paris-2-0 . If you type an extension such as .jpg it is ignored; the file keeps its own.

No. New installs don’t change any uploads until you choose. A one-time notice offers the recommended rules (lowercase, hyphens, transliteration), or pick your own under Media Rename → Auto-Rename Rules . Sites updating from an earlier version keep the rules they had.

Administrators by default. Under Media → Media Rename → Settings you can allow editors, or authors (for files they can edit). Developers can also use the orbitstem_rename_capability filter.

No. Links on your site are updated, and every old file URL (including all thumbnail sizes) gets a 301 redirect to the new file, so external links and image search keep working.

The undo record and redirects are saved before links are updated. On large sites the rename finishes right away and the link update continues in the background with a progress bar (it keeps going with WP-Cron if you close the page). If anything stops part-way, the History tab marks the rename as interrupted and Guide & Tools → Repair old links finishes it. Bulk jobs resume automatically.

Yes. Undo last rename in the panel, Roll back in Rename History (the most recent rename of each file), or Undo this whole job for a bulk run.

Yes. Product images, gallery and variation images are renamed with links updated, the {sku} and {product} tokens are available, and the product editor has a box to rename all of a product’s images.

Yes. With the transliteration rule ( Auto-Rename Rules ), Cyrillic, Greek, Chinese, Arabic and accented letters become readable Latin letters instead of being removed. For example Дача.jpg becomes dacha.jpg . Chinese, Japanese and Korean need the PHP intl extension, which most hosts have.

Yes. The rename panel lists every file that will be renamed, and Show exact database changes lists every post, custom field and setting that will be updated. Bulk rename has a dry-run preview that shows the final names, and WP-CLI commands accept --dry-run .

Media → Media Rename → Filename Audit scans your library for camera names ( IMG_1234 , DSC_ , PXL_ ), screenshots, random hashes, numbers-only, non-Latin and very short or long names. Each file gets a suggested name from its alt text, title or post, which you can edit. Tick the files and click Rename selected .

Yes. Under Metadata Sync choose, for title, alt text and caption, “Never change”, “Only when empty or generic” (fills blanks and replaces names like IMG_1234 without touching text you wrote) or “Always”.

You can also fill alt text on upload: each image gets the post title plus its own file name (“Our Summer Menu – Pasta”), so images in the same post don’t share one alt text. And files with a generic name (IMG_1234, a hash, a screenshot name) can be renamed automatically when you give them a title; files that already have a real name are never renamed by a title edit.

No. Only links to your own site are updated: http, https, with or without www, in any letter case, root-relative links (in HTML, CSS, JSON or plain text) and Jetpack image CDN links (i0.wp.com/yoursite.com/…). If your images are served from a CDN, add its domain under Settings → CDN domains . A link such as https://partner-site.com/wp-content/uploads/logo.jpg is never changed, even if your own logo has the same name.

Guide & Tools → Repair old links finds links that still use old file names, for example content added after a rename, renames done with “Update URLs everywhere” turned off, or an interrupted rename. Click Scan for old links first to see every change, then Repair these links . Links to a file name that another file now uses are left alone. Only administrators can run it.

Click Lock file in its rename panel. Locked files are skipped by bulk rename, audit fixes and automatic renames. Under Settings you can lock files automatically after you rename them by hand.

Yes. Open Move to another folder in the rename panel and enter a folder inside uploads, for example products/shoes . All sizes move together, links are updated and the old URLs redirect.

Yes, with WP-CLI:

wp orbitstem rename 123 red-running-shoes --dry-run wp orbitstem bulk --ids=10,11,12 --template="{post-title}-{counter}" wp orbitstem audit --issue=camera --format=csv wp orbitstem undo 123 wp orbitstem repair --dry-run

Run wp help orbitstem for all options.

Yes. Any file in the Media Library can be renamed. Image-only features (sizes, alt text, WebP copies) are simply skipped for other file types.

Files that WP Offload Media has copied to cloud storage are detected and cannot be renamed, because renaming only the local copy would break the cloud link. Other files work as usual.

No. Nothing runs on normal page views. Redirects are only checked when a missing file in the uploads folder is requested. Renames and bulk jobs run in the admin, in small steps.

Renamed files keep their new names and links stay updated. Deleting the plugin removes its settings and rename history. The redirect list is kept by default ( Settings → Keep redirects when deleted ), so reinstalling restores it.

Redirects only run while the plugin is active. To keep old image links working without the plugin, download them from the 301 Redirects tab as Apache (.htaccess) or nginx rules and add them to your server. Deactivating (without deleting) keeps everything.

Click Test redirects in the 301 Redirects tab. It requests the newest old links and tells you if each one reaches the new file. Some servers answer missing images themselves before WordPress runs; the test then says so, and you can add the exported Apache or nginx rules.

Yes. Yoast SEO and Rank Math social images stored in post meta are updated, and so is Yoast’s own indexables table. Developers can add other plugin tables with the orbitstem_extra_tables filter.