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 create, edit, and save your posts and pages, WordPress begins to store new revisions in its database. These appear in a Revisions box below the page or post …

Viewing the WordPress revisions box

(WordPress revisions list)

Having access to workflow functions like autosave and automatic revisions is no doubt a good thing. If you write often, however, after a while the number of revisions can start to build up. This can significantly increase the size of your WordPress database, so it’s important to manage your revisions.

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

(Post revisions can really add up after a while)

For example, if there are 100 posts on your site and each post has 10 revisions your WordPress database could be storing an extra 1,000 copies of old data. If your post is approximately 100KB data, then with 1,000 revisions of that post, the total database space wasted is about 100MB.

The good news is that there are various plugins to help you control 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)

This plugin removes redundant revisions of posts from your WordPress database and other revision-related content like tags, relationships, meta information, and more.

After installing and activating the plugin, Better Delete Revision can perform optimizations on your WP database without having to log into your server.

Log into your WordPress admin section, then go to your navigation menu and click on select Settings > Better Delete Revision

WP Settings Menu - Better Delete Revision

(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 you can safely delete from your WordPress database …

Check Revision Posts - Better Delete Revision

(Check Revision Posts – Better Delete Revision Manager)

A table of revisions stored in the database will be returned on the screen …

Posts revisions - Better Delete Revision Manager

(Posts revisions list)

Click on ‘Yes, I would like to delete them! …’ below the list to clear all items from the WP database …

Remove posts revisions list - Better Delete Revision

(Remove list of revisions)

The unnecessary post information will be deleted from your database …

Revisions list removed

(List of revisions cleared)

Practical Tip

As WordPress automatically stores all revisions, the process will automatically start again (unless you have turned the feature off). After a while, we recommend running the tool again to keep your WP database as lean as possible …

WordPress automatically begins storing all revisions again!

(Revisions automatically start being stored again!)

Like the other plugins listed in this section, you can also use this plugin to optimize your WordPress database …

Better Delete Revision Manager - Optimize your site's database

(Better Delete Revision Manager – Keep the database optimized)

Better Delete Revision checks to see if the WP database needs to be optimized and runs a one-click optimization maintenance routine without requiring you to log into your server panel …

Better Delete Revision lets you perform an easy one-click WordPress database optimization routine

(Better Delete Revision checks if the database tables need to be optimized)

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

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions - WordPress Plugin

(Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin For WordPress)

OptimizeDatabase not only lets you remove unnecessary page and post revisions (it also lets you keep a specific number of your most recent revisions) and checks if your WordPress database needs optimization, it also lets you do database maintenance tasks like:

  • Delete trashed comments, pages, and posts
  • Delete spammed comments
  • Delete ’orphan postmeta items’
  • Exclude selected tables or even specific pages/posts from optimization
  • Automatically schedule optimizations
  • And more!

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin - Settings Page

(Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions WP Plugin – Settings)

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

WP Optimize

WP-Optimize - WordPress Plugin

(WP-Optimize – WordPress Plugin)

In addition to performing tasks such as removing unnecessary page and post revisions and checking if your database needs cleaning and optimization, this plugin also lets you do the following:

  • Enable/Disable trackbacks for published posts
  • Remove unapproved comments
  • Mobile device friendly
  • Remove transient options
  • Clean up auto draft posts
  • Ability to keep selected number of weeks data when cleaning up
  • Option to add or remove link on WP admin bar
  • Enable/Disable weekly optimization schedules
  • See database table statistics
  • E-mail notifications after automatic database cleanups
  • Marks potentially dangerous cleanup operations in red
  • And more!

WP-Optimize Plugin For WordPress - Settings Page

(WP Optimize Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

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

WP-Sweep

WP-Sweep Plugin

(WP Sweep Plugin For WordPress)

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

  • Auto drafts
  • Unapproved comments
  • Orphaned term meta
  • Duplicated comment meta
  • Unused terms
  • And more!

WP Sweep Plugin For WordPress - Settings

(WP Sweep 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

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

Add Plugin - WordPress Plugins Menu

(Add Plugins – 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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