Removing target=”_new” from postsmeta table

Hi Javed,

Thank you for reaching out.

Could you please provide us with the page URL where we can check the hyperlink and a screen recording showing the steps you took to add the hyperlink in the Text Editor widget? You can use tools such as loom.com to record your screen.

Kind regards,

Hi,

I have managed to resolve this with a custom PHP script, in the posts meta table, Elementor serializes the content to JSON and I needed to remove the hyperlinks attributes from there.

Here is a copy of the script;

<?php
// Include WordPress to access $wpdb
require_once( 'wp-load.php' );

global $wpdb;

// Query the wp_postmeta table for posts with target="_new" or rel="noopener" in _elementor_data
$query = "
    SELECT post_id, meta_value
    FROM wpc5_postmeta
    WHERE meta_key = '_elementor_data'
    AND (meta_value LIKE '%target=%' OR meta_value LIKE '%rel=%')
    LIMIT 500;
";

$posts = $wpdb->get_results( $query );

// Check if posts are returned
if ( empty( $posts ) ) {
    echo "No matching posts found in wpc5_postmeta with '_elementor_data'.<br>";
    exit;
}

echo "Found " . count( $posts ) . " posts to update.<br>";

// Loop through each post to process and update
foreach ( $posts as $post ) {
    echo "<br>Processing post ID: " . $post->post_id . "<br>";

    // Output the raw meta_value to see the format
    echo "<strong>Raw meta_value:</strong><br>";
    var_dump($post->meta_value);
    echo "<br>";

    // Decode the JSON data
    $decoded_content = json_decode( $post->meta_value, true );
    
    if ( json_last_error() === JSON_ERROR_NONE ) {
        // Process the decoded content (if it's valid JSON)
        array_walk_recursive( $decoded_content, function( &$value ) {
            if ( is_string( $value ) ) {
                // Replace target and rel attributes
                $value = str_replace( 'target="_new"', '', $value );
                $value = str_replace( 'rel="noopener"', '', $value );
            }
        });

        // Re-encode the content as JSON
        $updated_meta_value = json_encode( $decoded_content );

        // Update the postmeta table with the new cleaned value
        $wpdb->update(
            'wpc5_postmeta',
            array( 'meta_value' => $updated_meta_value ),
            array( 'post_id' => $post->post_id, 'meta_key' => '_elementor_data' )
        );

        echo "Updated post ID: " . $post->post_id . "<br>";
    } else {
        echo "The content for post ID " . $post->post_id . " is not valid JSON.<br>";
    }
}

echo "Processing completed successfully!";

I then had to regenerate the CSS and library, cleared cache, checked the content and it’s removed those hyperlink attributes.

So I don’t think I need to share a Loom recording for this.

I’ll mark this as resolved.

Thanks
Javed