From now on you can find a new section on WPStuffs called ”All you need to know about“.In this section I will be sharing in depth articles covering the basics of WordPress. In first episode of its kind I would like to start with one of the underrated WordPress feature called post revisions. 
Most of the bloggers who use WordPress knows that there exist some feature called post revisions in WordPress but they do not care about learning about this amazing feature of WordPress.This article aims to educate you about WordPress post revisions and some cool tips to leverage the power of post revisions.
What are post revisions ?
While creating a new post or page in WordPress,every time you hit Save Draft or Update button,a new copy of the post will be saved along with time-strap instead of replacing the previous one. So if you save your content 10 times while publishing it then you will get a 10 different copies of the post and the latest revision will the be one you are currently editing.
In simple words,post revisions are like periodic backups for your individual posts.
This is the same principle behind Wikipedia collaborative editing,Even some body makes a drastic change in a content,any user can easily revert back to its previous state.It’s more or like Time travel.
Is it useful ?
Yes,It is.In fact post revisions are one of the most underrated feature of WordPress. Lets imagine that you felt asleep and mistakenly deleted a paragraph in a post and saved it.The very next morning you came to know about it,What can you do ? well here comes the post revisions to rescue.
How to restore a post revision ?
Its one of the simplest WordPress feature to understand,Lets learn how to revert back to previous copy of the post and restore the deleted paragraph that we discussed previously. 1.First step is to enable the display of post revisions via “screen options“. Screen options will be located in top right corner of the post/page.Click on it and it will expand.In a expanded interface you can see option to enable post revisions.Make sure that it is checked. [see the screenshot below]
Enabling Revisions via Screen Options
2.Now scroll down to the end of the post/page.You will get to see the list of post revisions created for a current post/page.
list of Post revisions
3.Click on the post revision you wish to restore.You can see the contents of the particular post revision after clicking the post revision. Now if you want to restore it then click on restore option which is located besides the post revision. [see the screenshot below]
Contents of the revision
4.You can also compare two post versions before restoring.In below screenshot the red colored sections are deleted contents and green colored sections are newly added contents.
Comparing two post revisions
Maximum number of post revisions that can be stored
If your blog is hosted on WordPress.com then maximum of 25 post revisions will be stored,after that the old copy will be replaced by new copy. If you have self hosted WordPress blog then there is no limit for post revisions,You can store as many post revisions you want to store but as the number of revision increases your database size also increases. Increasing database size doesn’t affect your blog speed but it becomes very difficult to take a backup of your blog’s database.So It is best practice to limit the maximum number of post revisions to avoid those problems.
Limiting the maximum number of post revisions ?
You can disable or limit number of post revisions manually by adding single line of code in wp-config.php.For more details you can refer my previous article : How to set Maximum number of Post Revisions without using a Plugin.
Plugins for managing Post Revisions
There are plenty of plugins available for managing post revisions.Some of them are
- Revision Control
- Better Delete Revision
- Delete Post Revisions
- Revision Removal
- Revision History
- Recent Revisions
- Published Revisions Only
- Revision Truncate
- WP-CMS Post Control
- WordPress Cleanup
- WP-Total Hacks
The End
Yes,you hit the rock bottom.I thank you for reading this article to this end.If you have any queries,connect with me though comment form below. You can Subscribe our Newsletter to get notified about our new article.if you found this article useful,Please share it to your social circles.
Appreciating the hard work you put into your website and detailed information you offer. It’s great to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same unwanted rehashed material. Great read! I’ve saved your site and I’m including your RSS feeds to my Google account.
I thank you for subscribing our rss feed…I will live upto your expectation to give more quality contents in future.
Vivek R recently posted…How to set Maximum number of Post Revisions without using a Plugin
OMG after I checked my previous revisions for every post all were having a very long list of previous revisions. When I thought of deleting them, I just remember in your previous post you wrote a bonus Tip about ‘Better delete revision’ plugin, I took that light but after this post it is an eye opener to a newbie like me. Now that I have to clean my DB I have to install this plugin.
Hey Vivek you are a (NWG) Noob WP Guru.
Now I also need to set the number of post revisions to save my DB space. Now waiting for your next article.
Vijesh recently posted…Tips to make an extraordinary Interview series for your blog
Actually your comment on previous article inspired me to write this article…I must thank you for this.I have a long list of post ideas covering basics of WordPress.So you can expect some good contents from WPStuffs in near future.
Vivek R recently posted…Four Bullet Proof Methods to build a Spam free WordPress blog
Ya I know you said na in the comment of the previous post. Now I too can add a point to how to get ideas for your next post. Ans is just actively participate in the comments and they too can some times give you an idea on what to write. What do you say?
“Symbiosis = Mutual Understanding.
You give one idea = I give one idea,
I get one idea= You get one idea,
Result two successful Blog posts, Blogs & Bloggers.”
Oh I am writing quotes instead of comments.
Vijesh recently posted…Tips to make an extraordinary Interview series for your blog
Yep..I agree we get to learn lot more when we participate in discussions.
Now I am going to claim a copyright for your quote – https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b73e66850e229716da2714bd81365c2c
Hello Vivek,
Thank you for dropping by on my website. Appreciate you taking time to share a quick thought.
By the way, I use ManageWP for my WordPress management and it does the database optimization, revisions cleanup and such activities pretty well.
Regards,
Kumar
Kumar Gauraw recently posted…How To Build Your Brand Identity Using Google Authorship
ManageWP is a great service and will be very useful if you manage multiple WordPress blogs.Since its a premium service most of the bloggers dont try it.
Vivek R recently posted…Adding simple codes to .htaccess can prevent your WordPress blog from hackers
OMG..never knew there exists a feature like this in wordpress. Thanks for the detailed instructions and print screens. Keep up the good work man!
Karthik recently posted…Protecting Files and Folders Using Truecrypt Encryption
Thanks Karthik…I will continue to do so.
Vivek R recently posted…Four Bullet Proof Methods to build a Spam free WordPress blog
A nice tool. I wan totally unaware of this. Thanks for sharing bro
Never knew that there are handful of plugins for managing post revisions.. however I prefer to set & limit post revisions the manual way as it is easy and needs couple of mods for getting needful changes like you have discussed in your other post..
King recently posted…How To Sign Up For HostGator Web Hosting?
Yep… Manual way is much better for managing such small WordPress features.
Vivek R recently posted…7 Real Ways to Make Money Online as an Internet Entrepreneur