Tools
The Tools tab groups utilities that don't belong with the per-feature configuration on the other tabs. Today it hosts three panels:
- Exclude paths — substrings to skip entirely (no log, no email, no redirect).
- Import / Export — move settings between sites as JSON.
- Danger Zone — destructive maintenance actions, currently the Purge all logs button.
Exclude paths
Setting key: exclude_paths · Default: empty list
A repeater of substrings. Any 404 whose URL contains any of the listed substrings is skipped entirely — no log row, no email, no redirect.
Use it for traffic you know you don't care about:
/wp-json/— REST probes from bots and integrations./feed/— defunct RSS endpoints..well-known/— robots.txt-style discovery probes./xmlrpc.php— legacy XML-RPC noise.
The match is a simple strpos() substring check (the URL is normalised first), not a regex. Empty rows are dropped at save time, so adding a row to type into and leaving it blank is safe.
How matching works
The check runs in Request::is_excluded() and is called at the top of every action in the chain — Log, Email and Redirect each ask the request whether it's excluded before doing any work. That means an excluded URL truly costs the plugin nothing past the substring scan.
Import / Export
Two buttons:
- Download settings — saves every user-facing setting to a JSON file. The filename includes the site host and the date so staging and production files don't collide in your Downloads folder.
- Import settings… — pick a previously-exported JSON file. The page reloads once the new values are applied so every tab on the Settings page reflects the imported state.
The exporter strips install-specific keys (database versions, migration flags) before writing the file, and the importer ignores them on the way in. That keeps the exchange safe between sites at different upgrade points.
Staging to production sync
Edit on staging, export, import on production. Addon settings stored inside the plugin's option are carried automatically — they share the same envelope.
For the REST surface behind these buttons (and for the 404_to_301_settings_export / …_import filters), see the Developer docs.
Danger Zone
A separate panel at the bottom of the tab for destructive maintenance actions. Today it has one button:
Purge all logs
Deletes every row from the wp_404_to_301_logs table in one shot. Clicking the button opens a confirmation modal so accidental clicks don't immediately wipe data — you have to explicitly approve before the purge runs.
What gets removed:
- Every recorded 404 log row, regardless of status (Open, Ignored, Fixed) or whether it has a linked custom redirect.
What is not touched:
- Your custom redirects. Those live in a separate table (
wp_404_to_301_redirects) and are untouched by this action. - Your settings — exclude paths, log/email/redirect settings, addons.
This is permanent
The action issues a TRUNCATE on the logs table. There is no undo and no row-level deletion event for addons to listen to. If you want an archive before clearing, run the Logs Exporter add-on first.
For routine pruning, use Logs Cleaner instead
Purge all logs is a one-shot maintenance action. For ongoing automatic pruning (delete rows older than N days, cap the table at N rows, run on a schedule), the Logs Cleaner add-on is the better fit.
Add-ons on this tab
When the Redirects Importer add-on is active it adds an Import redirects panel here — bulk-import custom redirects from a CSV file, or migrate them in from another redirect plugin (Redirection by John Godley, 301 Redirects – Redirect Manager by WebFactory) without re-entering each rule by hand. See the Add-ons section for the full list.