If you don’t know how to undo changes in WordPress with Post Revisions, let’s dive into this article to get more useful information.
What are Post Revisions?
Post Revisions is a built-in feature in WordPress. It plays an essential role in storing revision history for each post or page while you are writing. While you are working on a draft, the system will automatically save a temporary revision which is also called autosave. Autosaves are enabled for all posts and pages; however, they do not overwrite published content.
In addition, by default, WordPress saves a copy of your content every 60 seconds when there are any changes to your posts/pages. This mode helps you save your post if your power goes out, or you lose your internet connection.
Then, when you go back to edit that post, the system will display a warning telling you that there is a backup of your post and a link to restore the backup. When you review revisions, autosaves are highlighted.
Why should you use Post Revisions?
As we mentioned above, post revisions help you store a copy of your content automatically. Additionally, they allow you to switch between various states of your draft and make changes. Thanks to that, it is easy for you to manage the work of multiple authors.
What’s more, you can see who made changes to your article, what changes they made and much more. In short, WordPress Post Revisions is a really valuable feature for your website. Therefore, in today’s post, we will give you a step-by-step guide to using this built-in function. Now, just keep reading.
How to Undo Changes with Post Revisions in the Classic Editor?
If you are still using the Classic editor, in the post/page edit screen, let’s take a look at the right panel. You will see that WordPress shows the number of revisions in the Publish Meta box.
Now, if you click on the “Browse” link, it will take you to the post/page revisions screen.
The post revision screen will show you the latest revision of your post with a scroll bar on top. When you slide the button on the scroll bar, it will take you to the previous revision of the post/page.
Besides that, the revisions screen will highlight the content that was removed in the right column and the added content in the left column. Each change is marked in green or pink.
The author who made the changes, the time, and other information are displayed at the top.
Moreover, you can use the “ Previous” and ” Next” buttons to move around revisions.
Have a look at the box at the top that says ” Compare any two revisions“.
If you check that box, the post revisions will split the scrollbar button into two. Then, you can move each button to a different revision and compare the differences between any two revisions.
If you want to restore any revision, simply click on the “Revision” or “Restore This Autosave” button. WordPress will immediately restore the selected revision as your current post revision and you can save it as a draft.
Furthermore, you can rest assured that if you restore an earlier revision, it will not remove the latest version of your post.
How to use Post Revisions in the WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg)?
If you are using the new default editor of WordPress, you can easily find the post revisions under the Document panel on the post/page edit screen.
To see the post revisions, let’s click on the “Revisions“. Apart from this step, post revisions in Gutenberg work the same way as in the Classic editor.
Should you limit or disable the post revisions feature in WordPress?
You can limit or disable the post revisions feature. However, we strongly recommend that you do not disable this feature because post revisions are really valuable in a lot of situations.
Many users think that having many revisions can slow down their websites. But this is not true, since WordPress skips post revisions when you make database calls on the front-end. It only looks up revisions on the post edit screen or when you are browsing revisions.
WordPress enables you to control the number of revisions you keep. In order to limit post revisions, you can add the following code to your WordPress site’s wp-config.php file.
In this example, we limit the number of revisions to 10. You can replace 10 with the number of revisions you want.
define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 10 );
If, for any reason, you still want to delete post revisions in WordPress, you can use the WP-Optimize plugin.
First of all, you need to go to Plugins > Add New from your WordPress admin panel. Then, use the search bar to search for the plugin. After that, simply click on the Install Now button and Activate it.
Once the plugin is installed, go to the WP-Optimize > Database page and check the box labelled ” Clean all post revisions“. Then click on the ” Run optimization” button to delete all post revisions.
Summary
In a nutshell, that is all the information we want to share with you in today’s tutorial. Hopefully, this article can help you deal with your problems. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and we will support you as soon as possible.
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