WordPress Plugins For Managing WordPress Post Revisions

In this tutorial, we look at a number of WordPress plugins that will help you manage your post revisions.

WordPress Plugins For Managing WordPress Post Revisions

WordPress Plugins For Managing WordPress Post Revisions

In a separate tutorial, we looked at the WordPress Post Revisions feature, where WordPress saves all your post revisions, so you can always go back to an earlier version of what you have written and restore it.

In this tutorial, we look at a number of WordPress plugins that will help you manage your post revisions.

Managing Content Revisions Using Plugins

As soon as you edit and save a page or post, WordPress begins to store new revisions in its database. You can see these displayed in a Revisions section at the bottom of the post or page …

WordPress post revisions box - Post Editor section

(Viewing the WordPress revisions list)

Autosave and post revisions are no doubt features that help create a more productive workflow. If you write or edit extensively, however, the revisions can start to build up. This can significantly grow the size of your WordPress database, so it’s important to also be able to manage your revisions.

As post revisions accumulate, your WordPress database could be storing lots of unnecessary data

(Post revisions can really add up after a while)

For example, if you have 10 posts published on your site and each post has an average of 5 revisions your database could be storing an extra 500 copies of unnecessary data. If your post averages 100KB data, then with 500 revisions, the total database space wasted is about 50MB.

Fortunately, there are a few great plugins for WordPress available to help you manage your revisions and reduce the size of your WordPress database. Let’s take a look at a few of these:

Better Delete Revision

Better Delete Revision Plugin

(Better Delete Revision)

This plugin deletes redundant post revisions from your database and other revision-related content such as tags, relationships, meta data, and more.

After the plugin has been installed and activated, Better Delete Revision can perform optimizations on your WordPress database.

In your main menu of your admin area, click on Settings > Better Delete Revision

Settings Menu - Better Delete Revision

(Better Delete Revision – Settings Menu)

This brings you to the Better Delete Revision Manager area. Click the ‘Check Revision Posts’ button to calculate how many redundant post revisions you can remove from your WordPress database …

Better Delete Revision - Check Revision Posts

(Check Revision Posts – Better Delete Revision)

Depending on the number of posts and revisions related to each post, the plugin calculates and displays a table of revisions stored in the database …

Better Delete Revision - List of revisions

(List of post revisions)

Click on the ‘Yes, I would like to delete them! …’ button below the list to delete the items from the WP database, or choose the ‘No, …’ button to exit the tool …

Remove list of revisions - Better Delete Revision Manager

(Delete posts revisions list)

The redundant post information will be cleared from the database …

Post revisions deleted

(Better Delete Revision – Post revisions list removed)

Practical Tip

After a period of time and depending on the amount of content you have published on your site and their related post revisions, therefore, we recommend repeating this process to keep your WP database as lean as possible, since WordPress will automatically begin saving all new post revisions again (unless you specifically turn the feature off) …

WordPress automatically begins to save all post revisions again!

(Revisions automatically start again!)

Like the other plugins listed in this section, you can also use Better Delete Revisions to keep your site’s database optimized …

Keep your site's database optimized

(Keep your WP database optimized)

Better Delete Revision checks to see if your WP database needs optimization and provides a one-click table optimization routine that does not require you to log into your hosting panel or mess with complicated applications …

Better Delete Revision lets you perform an easy one-click table optimization maintenance routine

(Better Delete Revision lets you perform a one-click WP database table optimization routine)

For more details, go here: Better Delete Revision

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions WP Plugin

(Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin For WordPress)

The Optimize Database plugin not only can be used to delete unnecessary post and page revisions (it also lets you keep an ’x’ amount of your most recent revisions) and lets you perform an easy one-click WP database table optimization routine, it also lets you do optional maintenance tasks such as:

  • Delete trashed comments, posts, and pages
  • Delete spammed comments
  • Delete ’pingbacks’ and ‘trackbacks’
  • Exclude certain pages/posts and tables from optimization
  • Automatically schedule optimizations
  • And more!

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin For WordPress - Settings Panel

(Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin – Settings)

For more details, go here: Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin For WordPress

WP Optimize

WP-Optimize - WordPress Plugin

(WP Optimize)

In addition to performing tasks such as cleaning unnecessary revisions of posts and pages and checking if your database tables need to be cleaned and optimized, this plugin also lets you do the following:

  • Enable/Disable comments for published posts
  • Removal of trashed comments
  • Mobile device friendly
  • Removal of all trackbacks and pingbacks
  • Clear out post trash
  • Ability to retain data from selected number of weeks when cleaning up
  • Add or remove link on WP admin bar
  • Enable/Disable weekly schedules of optimization
  • See database table statistics (e.g. how much space can be optimized
  • E-mail notifications after automatic database cleanup
  • Marks dangerous cleanup items in red
  • And more!

WP Optimize - Settings Screen

(WP-Optimize Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

For more details, go here: WP Optimize Plugin For WordPress

WP Sweep

WP Sweep - WordPress Plugin

(WP Sweep Plugin)

In addition to optimizing your database tables and deleting unnecessary revisions, this plugin also cleans up:

  • Auto drafts
  • Spammed comments
  • Orphaned post meta
  • Duplicated post meta
  • Unused terms
  • And more!

WP-Sweep Plugin - Settings

(WP-Sweep Plugin – Settings Screen)

For more details, go here: WP-Sweep WordPress Plugin

Simple Revisions Delete

Simple Revisions Delete
Simple Revisions Delete – WordPress plugin

This lightweight and simple-to-use plugin lets you purge (delete) your posts revisions either individually or all at once.

Once the plugin has been installed and activated, for example, a ‘Purge’ link appears next to the Revisions section in your Publish box (and in other sections of your admin area) allowing you to safely delete revisions.

Publish box - Revisions: Purge link.
Click the Purge link to delete post revisions from your WordPress database.

For more details, go here: Simple Revisions Delete

WP REVISIONS CONTROL

WP Revisions Control
WP Revisions Control

This plugin lets you specify the number of revisions retained for each post type in the Settings > Writing screen.

WP Revisions Control Settings
WP Revisions Control Settings.

For more details, go here: WP Revisions Control

For more plugins that can help you manage post revisions and optimize your WP database, go to Plugins > Add New and search for keywords like “Post Revisions“, “Optimize Database“, etc …

Add New - WordPress Plugins Menu

(Add Plugin – WordPress Plugins Menu)

We hope that you have found the above information on plugins that will help you manage your WordPress post revisions useful.

WordPress Plugins For Managing WordPress Post Revisions

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