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 Revisions – WordPress Plugins

As soon as you update your posts and pages, WordPress begins to store new revisions in its database. These are displayed in a Revisions box at the bottom of your page editor …

Post Editor section - The WordPress revisions list

(WordPress post revisions list)

Autosave and post revisions are no doubt features that help create a more effective workflow. If you write and edit a lot of content, however, the number of revisions can start building up. This can significantly increase the size of your WordPress database, so it’s important to be able to manage your revisions.

Post revisions can really add up after a while

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

For example, if there are 200 posts on your site and each post has 20 revisions you could be storing around 4,000 copies of old data. If your post is approximately 100KB data, then with 4,000 revisions of that post, the total database space wasted is about 400MB.

Fortunately, there are some great free WordPress plugins available to help you manage your revisions and reduce the size of your database. Here are a few of these:

Better Delete Revision

Better Delete Revision - WordPress Plugin

(Better Delete Revision – WordPress Plugin)

Better Delete Revision removes redundant post revisions from your WordPress database and other revision-related content such as tags, relationships, meta information, and more.

After the plugin has been installed and activated, you can use the Better Delete Revision Manager to perform optimizations on your WP database.

Log into your WordPress Dashboard and click on Settings > Better Delete Revision

WordPress Settings - Better Delete Revision

(WordPress Settings – Better Delete Revision)

This brings you to the Better Delete Revision Manager panel. Click the ‘Check Revision Posts’ button to calculate the number of redundant post revisions can be deleted from the WordPress database …

Check Revision Posts - Better Delete Revision

(Check Revision Posts – Better Delete Revision)

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

Better Delete Revision - Posts revisions list

(List of revisions)

Click on ‘Yes, I would like to delete them! …’ to delete all list items from the WordPress database, or abandon the operation and exit the tool …

Clear posts revisions - Better Delete Revision

(Clear posts revisions list – Better Delete Revision)

The unnecessary items will be cleared from the database …

Post revisions list deleted

(Better Delete Revision – List of post revisions deleted)

Useful Tip

As WordPress automatically saves your new post revisions, the process will automatically start again (unless you have turned the feature off). After some time has passed, we recommend repeating this process to keep your WordPress database as lean as possible …

WordPress will automatically begin saving all revisions again!

(WordPress automatically begins storing all new post revisions again!)

Like the other plugins described in this section, you can also use this plugin to keep the site’s database optimized …

Better Delete Revision Manager - Optimize the database

(Keep your WP database optimized)

The plugin checks to see if your database tables need optimization and lets you perform an easy one-click table optimization routine without requiring you to log into your hosting panel or use complicated database management applications …

Better Delete Revision lets you perform a one-click optimization routine

(Better Delete Revision lets you perform an easy one-click database table optimization routine)

For more details, go here: Better Delete Revision Plugin For WordPress

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions

(Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin For WordPress)

OptimizeDatabase not only lets you delete redundant page and post revisions (with the added option of keeping a specific number of your most recent revisions) and lets you perform an easy one-click WP database cleaning and optimization routine, it also lets you do the following optional tasks:

  • Delete trashed posts, comments, and pages
  • Delete unused tags
  • Delete ’orphan postmeta items’
  • Exclude selected posts/pages and tables from cleaning and optimization
  • Automatically schedule optimizations
  • And more!

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions - WordPress Plugin Settings Screen

(Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions – Settings)

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

WP Optimize

WP Optimize WordPress Plugin

(WP-Optimize – WordPress Plugin)

In addition to deleting redundant revisions of posts and pages and checking if your WP database tables need cleaning and optimization, WP Optimize also lets you perform maintenance tasks like:

  • Enable/Disable comments for all published posts
  • Remove stale unapproved comments
  • Mobile device friendly
  • Remove transient options
  • Clear out the post trash
  • Ability to keep data from selected number of weeks when cleaning up
  • Option to add or remove link on WP admin bar
  • Enable/Disable weekly schedules of optimization
  • See database table statistics (e.g. how much space has been cleared
  • E-mail notifications on scheduled database cleanup
  • Highlights dangerous cleanup items in red
  • And more!

WP-Optimize WP Plugin - Settings

(WP Optimize Plugin For WordPress – Settings Panel)

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

WP-Sweep

WP-Sweep

(WP-Sweep Plugin)

WP Sweep allows you to clean up duplicated, unused, and orphaned data in your WordPress database, including post revisions. This plugin cleans up:

  • Auto drafts
  • Deleted comments
  • Orphan term relationships
  • Duplicated user meta
  • Transient options
  • And more!

WP-Sweep Plugin - Settings Page

(WPSweep WordPress Plugin – Settings)

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

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

Plugins Menu - Add New Plugins

(WordPress Plugins Menu – Add New Plugins)

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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)

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