One of my wordpress web sites has over 20,000 users. Most of these users were verified when they signed up for their account, but there are still a large number of bounce email I get every time I send out a user mailing. There are also a number of “unsubscribe” messages that I get.
I searched around for a plug-in that would allow me to upload a CSV file and would then bulk-delete the users but none was found. Instead of creating a new plug-in I decided to figure out a way of doing some form of bulk removal of users. Here is what I did (note: my site does not have any “contributor” users):
- For each bounce email or unsubscribe request I receive I copy the email address
- Execute this query in your wordpress database:[quote style=”boxed”] update wp_usermeta SET meta_value=’a:1:{s:11:”contributor”;s:1:”1″;}’ where meta_key=’wp_capabilities’ AND user_id= (SELECT ID from wp_users where user_email=’theuser@example.com’);[/quote]
- I repeat that for all users
- Go to the Users panel, click on “Contributors”
- Click the check mark all
- Bulk Delete
Again, this works for me because everyone is a “Subscriber” and the “Contributors” list is always empty so I use that to store my temporary delete list.