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 Post Revisions – WordPress Plugins

As soon as you create, edit, and update pages and posts, WordPress begins to store new post revisions in its database. These show up in a Revisions section at the bottom of the post or page …

View the WordPress post revisions box - Post Editor screen

(View the WordPress post revisions box)

For most WordPress users, having access to workflow functions like autosave and revisions is something that can help make work more efficient. If you write or edit a lot of content, however, the 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.

As you write more posts, your WordPress database could be storing lots of unnecessary data

(Post revisions can really add up after a while)

For example, if you have 100 posts published on your site and each post has an average of 10 revisions you could be storing an extra 1,000 copies of unnecessary data. If your post is approximately 100KB data, then with 1,000 revisions, the total database space wasted is about 100MB.

The good news is that there are a number of free plugins that can help you control your revisions and reduce the size of your WordPress database. Here are a few:

Better Delete Revision

Better Delete Revision - WordPress Plugin

(Better Delete Revision WP Plugin)

This plugin removes redundant post revisions from your database as well as database content associated with each revision like relationships, tags, meta data, and more.

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

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

WP Settings Menu - Better Delete Revision

(Settings Menu – Better Delete Revision)

This brings you to the Better Delete Revision Manager screen. Click ’Check Revision Posts’ to calculate how many redundant post revisions you can delete from the WP database …

Better Delete Revision Manager - Check Revision Posts

(Better Delete Revision – Check Revision Posts)

Depending on the number of posts and revisions belonging to each post, the plugin return a table of post revisions stored in your WP database …

List of revisions - Better Delete Revision

(List of revisions)

Click on the button below the list to remove the items from your database, or choose the ‘No, …’ button to abandon the process and exit the Better Delete Revision Manager screen …

Clear posts revisions list

(Delete posts revisions list)

The unnecessary post revisions will be cleared from the WP database …

Post revisions list cleared - Better Delete Revision

(Better Delete Revision – Post revisions list cleared)

Practical Tip

After a period of time and depending on the number of posts you have published on your website and their associated post revisions, we recommend running the tool again to keep your database as lean as possible, since WordPress automatically begins to store all revisions again (unless you have turned the feature off) …

WordPress automatically begins saving all post revisions again!

(Post revisions automatically start again!)

Like the other plugins described further below, you can also use Better Delete Revisions to keep your site’s database optimized …

Keep the site's database optimized

(Keep the WP database optimized)

The plugin checks to see if the database tables need to be optimized and performs a one-click optimization maintenance routine without the need to log into your hosting panel or mess with complicated database management applications …

Better Delete Revision checks if your database tables need optimization

(Better Delete Revision checks if your WordPress database tables need optimization)

For more details, go here: Better Delete Revision Plugin

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin For WordPress

(Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin)

OptimizeDatabase not only lets you remove unnecessary post and page revisions (with the option of keeping an ‘x’-amount of your most recent revisions) and lets you perform an easy one-click table optimization maintenance routine, it also lets you perform the following optional maintenance tasks:

  • Delete trashed pages, posts, and comments
  • Delete spammed comments
  • Delete ‘expired transients’
  • Exclude certain posts/pages and tables from cleaning and optimization
  • Create a log file of the optimizations
  • And more!

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin For WordPress - Settings

(Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

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

WP-Optimize

WP Optimize - WordPress Plugin

(WP Optimize – WordPress Plugin)

In addition to performing tasks such as cleaning redundant revisions of pages and posts and checking if your WordPress database needs cleaning and optimization, this plugin also lets you perform the following maintenance tasks:

  • Enable/Disable trackbacks for published posts
  • Remove trashed comments
  • Mobile device friendly (optimize your site on the go)
  • Removal of all transient options
  • Clean up auto draft posts
  • Ability to retain selected number of weeks data when cleaning up
  • Option to add or remove link on WP admin bar
  • Enable/Disable weekly schedules of optimization
  • View database table statistics
  • Receive email notifications on scheduled database cleanup
  • Highlights dangerous cleanup operations in red
  • And more!

WP-Optimize - Settings Screen

(WP Optimize Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

For more details, go here: WP-Optimize Plugin

WP-Sweep

WP-Sweep Plugin For WordPress

(WP-Sweep WP Plugin)

In addition to optimizing your database tables and deleting unnecessary post revisions, WP-Sweep also cleans up:

  • Auto drafts
  • Deleted comments
  • Orphaned comment meta
  • Duplicated user meta
  • Unused terms
  • And more!

WPSweep Plugin For WordPress - Settings Page

(WP-Sweep Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

For more details, go here: WP Sweep WP 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

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

Add New - Plugins Menu

(Add New Plugins – 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

***

"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group

***