I’m not much of a SQL expert…I’ve used SQL to run database queries a few times in my life, so I’m familiar with the process, but my knowledge of SQL could fill a thimble.

Every time I want to run a query, I have to look up the SQL reference to remember the proper formatting, keywords and syntax.

So, where am I going with this?

In an effort to clean up my blog a bit, I’ve been running various scans and evaluations on my content. The issue arose from the fact that I host all my images and videos locally, I don’t trust any of the big tech companies not to blackball me at some point, so I don’t use them. I’ve been doing that pretty much since I moved over from blogger many years ago.

The problem is that any of my old posts where I embedded an image or video from my own site, were referenced to the http: version rather than the https: version. That’s what was causing the warnings.

Well, I knew it would take freaking forever to go back and update 13 years worth of old posts, so I decided to do it the dangerous way. I logged directly into the WP database and ran a SQL query that replaced every instance of “http://sailorcurt.com” to “https://sailorcurt.com”.

I’m posting about it because I’m proud of myself for figuring it out, doing it correctly and not blowing my blog completely up. Of course, I backed up the database before I did it so I could restore if disaster struck, but I got it right the very first time and it worked perfectly. No more warnings about references to unsecure content.

It took me about 5 minutes to back up the database, about 10 minutes to remind myself of the SQL terms and syntax for the query I wanted to run and about 2 seconds for the query to actually execute.

Versus who knows how many hours it would have taken to fix it all manually.

Sometimes a little geek knowledge comes in handy.

Oh, and I fixed a couple of other minor little niggling things that had been bothering me too. If I get nothing else done all day (fat chance of that), I’ll feel a sense of accomplishment just for what I’ve done here.