Run Bulk Operations on your Pressable Sites

This feature will help you run bulk operations (of bash or WP CLI commands) on your Pressable sites quickly from within the My.Pressable.com Dashboard.

Current Bulk Operations available include:

• Update PHP Version
• Update WordPress Version (when available)
• Custom Bash Command (see here for Bash commands on individual sites)

Accessing Bulk Operations

The feature can be found under the My.Pressable.com Dashboard navigate to the Tools →Bulk Operations section.

Once you click on the Tools → Bulk Operations menu, you will see the following:

Creating Bulk Operations

To create a new Bulk Operation, you will need to follow the creation wizard which consists of three steps:

Step 1: Set up the operation

• Select operation type
  • Update PHP version
  • Update WordPress version
  • Bash command (includes WP CLI commands)
  • Update plugins
  • Update themes
  • Refresh plugins
  • Refresh themes
• If needed for option type, provide specific bash/WP CLI command or other relevant options (such as PHP version)
• Choose operation action:
  • Run now
  • Bookmark only (for future use)
  • Bookmark and run now

Step 2: Select sites on which to run

You can select which of your sites the operation runs on by one of three methods:

• Manually select sites from a list
• Run on all sites
• Upload a CSV file with a single column named ID, listing the site IDs for this operation (you can download a sample CSV from the bulk operations page)

You will see every site on your account if you are the owner and also sites where you are a Collaborator and have the “Execute Bulk Operations” permission.

Step 3: Name the operation

Give the operation a clear and unique name. The operation name will appear in your Activity Log, and a good explanatory name will also help you locate the right operation from your bookmarked operations in the future.

Once done, you can click on the Run Operation button.

Custom Bash Command

If you are running a simple command using WP CLI, you should be able to just input the command and run it.

However, creating and running Custom Bash Scripts needs a couple of additional steps. Once you have your script ready, you need to create a bash file.

Here are the steps to create a .sh Bash script using the code.

1. Login to any of your Pressable sites (yourdomain.com) within the same account you are looking to run the bulk operation via SSH. We’d recommend doing this on a test site.
2. Create your .sh file:
   nano yourownscriptname.sh
3. You can now copy-paste your code into the file and save it. 
   (Press CTRL + O to save, then CTRL + X to exit.)
4. Change the file permissions to make it executable:
   chmod -v +x yourownscriptname.sh
5. Test the script by running it on the test site where you created the file to ensure that it is doing what you expect.
6. Run the script using this command in the Bulk Operations tool –
   curl -s https://yourdomain.com/yourownscriptname.sh | bash

Bulk Operations Bookmarks – Save and Reuse Operations

This feature allows you to save, manage, and reuse frequently used custom Bash commands. This helps streamline workflows for users who regularly run the same commands across multiple sites, such as cache clearing, database maintenance, and security checks.

Creating a Bookmark

You can bookmark a command directly from the Bulk Operations interface. When creating the operation, during Step 1 select one of the following:

• Bookmark Only
• Bookmark and Run Now

Once you have at least one command saved, it will be available in your list of bookmarks when you access the Bulk Operations section, as shown below.

Using a Bookmarked Command

To run a saved command:

1. Go to Tools → Bulk Operations.
2. Click the “Use Bookmark” button
3. A pop-up will appear showing your saved Bookmarks, allowing you to easily select the one you’d like to use.
4. Choose the sites where the command should run.
5. Click Run Operation.

Managing Bookmarks

From the Bulk Operations section, you can click on Manage Bookmarks to:

• Search saved bookmarks
• Edit existing commands
• Delete bookmarks that are no longer needed

Running Bookmarks on Individual Sites

Bookmarked commands can also be run on individual sites:

1. Navigate to Sites → Select a Site → Overview → Site Tools → Bash Command → Use Bookmark
2. Select a saved command
3. Run command on the site

Bulk Operations History

When at least one Bulk Operation is created, The Bulk Operation History section is shown. Here, you can see currently running and also previously executed operations:

History can be filtered by Bulk Operation Name/Type, or by Site Name (results will include any Bulk Operations action that included the particular site):

Each item in the Bulk Operations History search result contains the following data:

• Bulk Operation name
• Status (of the operation):
  • Pending – the operation is created but it’s not being executed yet
  • Running – the operation is actively running
  • Complete – the operation on each site has finished running
• Date it was created on
• The email of the person who created it
• Command type:
  • Update PHP version
  • Update WordPress version
  • Bash Command
• Command – Here you will see the actual command that was run or the version of PHP or WordPress that was selected
• Operation Progress – this represents the operation being run on specific sites. Sites where this operation is run and their current status can be seen when you click the Operation Progress button. This can have 3 statuses:
  • Pending – the operation has not yet started
  • Complete – the operation has finished successfully
  • Expired – the operation could not get completed within an 8-hour window.

After the Bash Command operation is run, you can view the response from each site by exporting a Response CSV. Under the Bulk Operation History section, every Bulk Operation of type Bash Command will have a button available that says Export responses CSV.

Clicking that button will send you an email with the report of the responses.

The CSV will have the following 8 columns –

• site_id
• site_name
• site_custom_name
• pressable_site_url
• site_url
• operation_status
• operation_command (the actual command that was executed)
• operation_response (the response we got from the site when executing the command)

The following image shows an example of the CSV file –

Note: When a Collaborator sees the Operation Progress section, they will be able to see only the Sites where they have the “Execute Bulk Operations” Collaborator permission. By default, this is disabled for all existing Collaborators.

Bulk Operations API

Bash commands can be run via the API directly: https://my.pressable.com/documentation/api/v1#bash-commands