What each setting changes

Quick answer

Nothing on the Settings screen has to be touched for the plugin to work; every value has a default that suits an ordinary site.

The screen is under Bulk Replace → Settings and everything on it is per site, not per batch.

Matching and processing

Auto-accept threshold (0.65). At or above this score a proposed match is put forward as Matched; below it the row goes to Needs Review. Raise it if you are getting confident-looking proposals that are wrong; lower it if you are reviewing rows that were obviously right.

High-confidence threshold (0.85). Cosmetic. It decides where the score indicator turns green, so a long list can be scanned. It never changes an outcome, and it is held at or above the accept threshold.

Rows per request (5). How many files are processed in each background request during Backup & Replace. Lower it on a slow server that is timing out; raising it rarely helps, because the limit is usually how long one file takes rather than how many are asked for at once.

Rename policy (keep). By default the replacement keeps the destination's existing filename, which is what makes the URL survive. Switching it to template renames the destination using the pattern beside it — only do that if you understand that the old URL stops working.

Variant groups. Terms the matcher should treat as interchangeable, as JSON. Ships empty. This is the one piece of matching vocabulary you can edit.

Folders

Staging and backups default to folders under your uploads directory. Both have to be writable by PHP and by whatever account you upload with.

A folder typed here is only honoured if it sits inside wp-content. A value pointing anywhere else is refused, the default is used, and a notice says so — silently writing backups somewhere you did not choose would be worse than refusing.

To put backups outside the web root entirely, define WPBR_BACKUPS_DIR (or WPBR_STAGING_DIR) in wp-config.php. The field then renders as fixed text, because it has no effect while the constant is set.

Combine Files

Off by default. Merging PDFs needs a capable backend and what the merged file is like depends entirely on which one your server has, so the screen lists what it found before you decide.

Diagnostics

Off by default. The diagnostic pages print raw batch rows and resolved server paths — more detail than needs to be reachable day to day. Administrator access and a signed link are required regardless.

Help Centre address

Where the "Learn more" links on these screens point. Leave it blank and no help links render at all: the plugin will not show you a link it cannot honour. Nothing contacts this address while a screen loads — it is only ever used to build a link.

When the plugin is deleted

Off by default. While it is off, deleting the plugin leaves every batch, every history entry, your settings and all backups untouched, and reinstalling picks them straight back up.

Filters still apply

Code can override any of these. The filters are documented in docs/EXTENDING.md, and they are applied on top of what is saved here — so a site with an opinion in code keeps it whatever an administrator types.