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 Plugins
As soon as you update posts and pages, WordPress begins to store new post revisions in its database. You can see these displayed in a Revisions section below the post editor …
(Post Editor section – View the WordPress post revisions list)
Having autosave and automatic revisions is no doubt something that can help make work more efficient. If you write or edit often, however, over time the revisions can start to build up. This can significantly bloat 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)
For example, if there are 100 posts on your site with an average of 10 revisions each your database could be storing up to 1,500 copies of old data. If your post averages 100KB data, then with 1,500 post revisions, the total space wasted is about 150MB.
Fortunately, there are a number of WordPress plugins available to help you control your revisions and reduce the size of your WordPress database. Here are some of these:
Better Delete Revision
(Better Delete Revision – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin removes redundant post revisions from your WordPress database as well as other revision-related content such as tags, relationships, meta data, and more.
After installing and activating the plugin, you can perform optimizations on your WP database without having to log into your server.
In the Dashboard menu section, click on Settings > Better Delete Revision …
(WP Settings Menu – 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 safely removed from your WordPress database …
(Better Delete Revision Manager – Check Revision Posts)
A table of post revisions stored in the WP database will display on the screen …
(Posts revisions)
Click on the button below the list to remove all items from the database …
(Better Delete Revision – Remove list of post revisions)
The redundant post information will be cleared from the database …
(Revisions list deleted)
As WordPress automatically saves all revisions, the process will automatically begin again. After a period of time and depending on the amount of content you have published on your website, we recommend running the tool again to keep your WordPress database as lean as possible …
(WordPress will automatically begin to save your revisions again!)
Like the other plugins described further below, you can also use Better Delete Revisions to keep your database optimized …
(Optimize your WordPress database – Better Delete Revision)
The plugin checks to see if the database needs to be optimized and performs an easy one-click table optimization maintenance routine without the need to log into your server control panel …
(Better Delete Revision lets you perform an easy one-click optimization routine)
For more details, go here: Better Delete Revision Plugin For WordPress
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions
(Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions WordPress Plugin)
The Optimize Database plugin not only lets you delete redundant post and page revisions (it also lets you keep a specific number of the most recent revisions) and lets you perform a one-click optimization routine, it also lets you perform optional maintenance tasks such as:
- Delete trashed comments, posts, and pages
- Delete spammed comments
- Delete ‘expired transients’
- Exclude certain posts/pages and tables from optimization
- Automatically schedule optimizations
- And more!
(Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin – Settings Screen)
For more details, go here: Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions Plugin For WordPress
WP Optimize
(WP Optimize WP Plugin)
In addition to performing tasks such as deleting redundant revisions of pages and posts and checking if your WP database needs cleaning and optimization, WP Optimize also lets you do the following maintenance tasks:
- Enable/Disable comments for published posts
- Removal of spam comments
- Mobile device friendly
- Remove transient options
- Clear out post trash
- Ability to retain selected number of weeks data when cleaning up
- Add or remove link on WP admin bar
- Enable/Disable weekly optimization schedules
- See database table statistics
- Receive email notifications after automatic database cleanups
- Displays potentially dangerous cleanup options in red
- And more!
(WP-Optimize Plugin For WordPress – Settings)
For more details, go here: WP-Optimize WordPress Plugin
WP-Sweep
(WP Sweep Plugin For WordPress)
WP Sweep allows you to clean up unused, orphaned, and duplicated data in the database, including revisions. This plugin cleans up:
- Auto drafts
- Deleted comments
- Orphan post meta
- Duplicated post meta
- Transient options
- And more!
(WPSweep – WordPress Plugin Settings Screen)
For more details, go here: WP Sweep WordPress Plugin
Simple Revisions Delete

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.

For more details, go here: Simple Revisions Delete
WP REVISIONS CONTROL

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

For more details, go here: WP Revisions Control
For more plugins that can help you manage post revisions and optimize your database, go to Plugins > Add New and search for keywords like “Revisions“, “Optimize“, etc …
(Add New 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.
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