Change many sessions at once – without opening every form. The Master Editor shows your program as a table where you type directly or apply bulk actions to selected rows.
The opening talk moves by half an hour – and with it the forty sessions after it. Instead of opening forty forms, you filter, select the affected rows, choose “Shift Time (Min +/-)”, enter 30 and click “Apply” once. You find it under Events → Master Editor.
The five control zones
- 1Filter bar
Search (titles, descriptions and IDs at once), main event, date, venue, category. Choose a main event and the other fields only offer values that occur in it – you cannot filter yourself into an empty selection. “Reset filter” restores the start state, “Show changes” hides everything except rows with unsaved changes.
- 2Bulk actions
Choose an action, enter a value, “Apply” – affects all selected rows and is saved at once.
- 3Selection column
A checkbox per row; the checkbox in the header selects everything on the current page.
- 4The table
Almost every field can be clicked and changed directly. The image icon opens the media library, the description fields open a large text window. Click a column header to sort.
- 5View options
“Customize view” defines which columns are visible and how many entries are loaded per page (25, 50 or 100). The choice is saved per user.
The color code while editing
| Marker | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Blue border | Changed but not saved yet. | Click “Save all changes”. |
| Green flash | Saved successfully. | Nothing. |
| Red border | Validation error – e.g. an event ID already in use or an end time before the start time. | Hover over the field, read the message and correct it. |
If you leave the page with unsaved changes, the browser warns you. Don’t ignore the warning.
All bulk actions
| Group | Actions |
|---|---|
| Time & date | Shift time (min +/-) · Shift date (days +/-) · Change date |
| Structure | Set main event · Set category · Set primary category · Set venue · Set role |
| Status | Set cancelled (yes/no) · Show details (on/off, i.e. the click action) |
| Links & details | Set ticket URL · Hide tickets (on/off) · Set target (same/new window) · Set external link · Set person / role · Set role URL · Set language · Set internal info page |
| Title | Search & replace title |
| Delete | “Delete selected” removes the selected entries permanently – no trash. |
Download a CSV backup under Import / Export first – it takes ten seconds.
Applying a bulk action
- 1Filter first
until only the sessions you want are left in the table. This is the most important step: what you don’t see is not changed.
- 2Select
Checkboxes on the left, or the header checkbox for all rows on the page.
- 3Action and value
e.g. “Shift Time (Min +/-)” and “30” – or the new venue from the list.
- 4Apply
The change is saved immediately; bulk actions skip the blue intermediate step.
After every larger bulk action, the dashboard shows at once whether required details got lost.
Auto-save
The “Auto-save” switch saves every change when you leave a field – without the blue intermediate step. Handy for many small corrections, but without a safety net; the editor therefore asks for confirmation when you switch it on.
Speakers in the Master Editor
The “Person / Role” column edits the first speaker of a session. If an entered name matches exactly one speaker record, both are linked automatically; ambiguous names stay unlinked, and a name without a match never removes an existing link. Additional speakers are maintained in the edit screen or via the CSV column speakers.
When the Master Editor behaves oddly
| Observation | Cause and fix |
|---|---|
| “Access denied 403” or saving fails (403/500) | Usually a security plugin (e.g. Wordfence) or the server firewall blocks the request because a lot of data is sent at once. Check the firewall or save fewer rows at a time. |
| Changes are gone after reloading | If the fields still had a blue border, “Save all changes” was not clicked. A red border is a validation error that has to be fixed first. |
| “Event ID already in use” | The ID belongs to another session. IDs must be unique, otherwise CSV updates don’t work reliably. |
| Menu item missing | The Master Editor is available to editors and administrators, not authors. |