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.

Revision Management WordPress Plugins

As soon as you create, edit, and save your posts/pages, WordPress begins to store new post revisions in its database. These are displayed in a Revisions list at the bottom of the page or post …

The revisions list - Post Editor section

(Post revisions list)

For most WordPress users, having autosave and revisions is no doubt a timesaver. If you write extensively, however, after a while the revisions can start building up. This can significantly grow the size of your WordPress database, so it’s important 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 100 posts published on your site with an average of 10 revisions each your WordPress database could be storing an extra 1,500 copies of unnecessary data. If your post averages 100KB data, then with 1,500 revisions, the total database space wasted is about 150MB.

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

Better Delete Revision

Better Delete Revision Plugin

(Better Delete Revision – WordPress Plugin)

Better Delete Revision deletes redundant revisions of posts from your database as well as other revision-related content such as relationships, tags, meta data, 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 Dashboard and select Settings > Better Delete Revision

WP Settings - Better Delete Revision

(WordPress Settings Menu – Better Delete Revision)

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

Better Delete Revision Manager - Check Revision Posts

(Check Revision Posts – Better Delete Revision Manager)

A list of post revisions stored in the WordPress database will be returned on the screen …

List of revisions - Better Delete Revision

(Posts revisions)

Click on the ‘Yes, I would like to delete them! …’ button below the list to delete all items from the database, or select ‘No, I prefer to keep them!’ to abandon the task and exit the tool with all post revisions undeleted …

Remove list of post revisions

(Clear posts revisions list)

The unnecessary items will be cleared from the WP database …

List of revisions cleared

(List of revisions deleted – Better Delete Revision)

Practical Tip

After a period of time and depending on the amount of content you have published on your website, we recommend repeating this process to keep your database as lean as possible, since WordPress will automatically begin to save all post revisions again (unless you have turned the feature off) …

WordPress will automatically begin storing all revisions again!

(Revisions automatically start being saved again!)

Like the other plugins described further below, you can also use this plugin to keep your database optimized …

Better Delete Revision - Keep your site's database optimized

(Keep your WP database optimized – Better Delete Revision)

Better Delete Revision checks to see if your database tables need to be optimized and provides a one-click table optimization function without the need to log into your server control panel …

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

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

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

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin

(Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin For WordPress)

This plugin is similar to the one described above. It not only lets you delete redundant post and page revisions (with the option to keep a specific number of your most recent revisions) and checks if the database tables need optimization, it also lets you do the following optional maintenance tasks:

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

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin - Settings

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

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

WP Optimize

WP Optimize Plugin

(WP Optimize – WordPress Plugin)

In addition to cleaning redundant page and post revisions and performing database table cleaning and optimization routines, WP Optimize also lets you do the following maintenance tasks:

  • Enable/Disable trackbacks for all published posts
  • Removal of stale spam comments
  • Mobile device friendly
  • Remove trackbacks and pingbacks
  • 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 cleanups
  • Displays potentially dangerous cleanup operations in red
  • And more!

WP-Optimize WordPress Plugin - Settings Screen

(WP-Optimize – WordPress Plugin Settings)

For more details, go here: WP-Optimize Plugin

WP-Sweep

WP-Sweep Plugin

(WP Sweep Plugin For WordPress)

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

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

WP Sweep - Settings Screen

(WP Sweep – Settings)

For more details, go here: WP-Sweep 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 WordPress database, go to Plugins > Add New and search for keywords like “Manage Post Revisions“, “Database Optimize“, etc …

Add New Plugin - Plugins Menu

(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

***

"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com

***