Losing work while editing is an irritating problem. Fortunately for users, there is a feature that prevents this from happening. It is called WordPress revisions, whose main function is to record the changes made to the posts.
But what else can you do with this feature? In this article, you will learn all about it along with some customization options.
What are WordPress reviews?
The Post Revisions feature is a useful tool that saves and displays all previous versions of a specific post.
Any changes to the content will be recorded as separate versions, or revisions, each time you click the button. Save draft, Update either Post.
There are two main reasons why WordPress reviews are important. First because of its autosave feature, and second, the ability it gives you to restore your post.
The autosave feature would restore the post to its last state in the event of a power outage or similar issue. It automatically saves a copy of your post every 60 seconds, so you have a save point if something unwanted happens.
Let’s look at the second reason: the ability to go back to a previous version of a post.
This feature is useful in editorial work involving more than one person. If your colleagues edit a post, WordPress reviews will list their usernames and the timestamp of the edit. It also shows what changes have been made to the post.
The Many Options of WordPress Reviews
There are several situations where WordPress reviews can be of great help. For example, you want to see what your editor added or removed from your article, to make it even better.
Or maybe after finishing a post, you think and realize that an earlier version was better and you want to put it back online. You can do all of that by viewing, comparing, and restoring a later revision.
However, before moving on to customizing some WordPress reviews, you should know that there must be at least two edits to your post before the reviews button can appear.
How to view reviews
Once you are on the desired post, you can enter the revisions settings in the menu Document.
There is a slider that will help you scroll through all the edits and will show you which users reviewed the post and when.
There are two columns in this interface. On your right, you will see the selected revision of the article, and on the left, you will see the previous one. Any content added will be highlighted in green while parts removed will be highlighted in red.
Compare different reviews
You can compare two versions of your post. However, they are sequential revisions, which means that one happened after the other.
To put two non-sequential versions next to each other, you must click Compare any two reviews and use the slider to point to which mods you want to see. This function shows the respective users who made edits.
Restore from a later revision
To restore a previous version, just drag the slider to the desired point and click Restore this review. You will replace the existing content with the specified version.
Customize WordPress Reviews
Reviews are a default feature in WordPress that have predefined settings. Fortunately, you can customize the feature if you want, including removing, limiting, and disabling it.
Delete WordPress Reviews
If your WordPress plugin has thousands of revisions and takes up tons of database storage, you can easily clean it up.
To do so, install a so-called . This simple tool will manage your reviews seamlessly.
1. After installing the plugin, click Tools on your dashboard and select sweep. In the table, you will see reviews and the next action.
The maximum number of revisions displayed is 500, for performance reasons.
2. Confirm that what you are deleting is no longer important. If everything is ok, click sweep. You’ll see a dialog showing how many reviews are being processed. Once you complete everything, the reviews will be removed successfully.
Limit WordPress revisions
There is also a plugin that will help you with the task, called WP-Disable. However, the menu is labeled as optimization.io in the WordPress dashboard.
1. Make sure the plugin has been installed. click on optimization.io and go to the Admin tab.
2. At the top, you can see the setting for the number of revisions per post (post revision number). Open the dropdown menu and choose the maximum number of revisions you want. The maximum is 30.
Disable WordPress reviews
There are two ways to disable WordPress revisions: with optimization.io or by modifying the .
With the plugin, all you need to do is change the number of revisions per post a 0.
However, carelessly editing the file wp-config.php can be dangerous, so we recommend following the explanation exactly.
Usually the file can be found in the folder public_html of your website.
To access the file, you need an FTP client like . Alternatively, you can use File Manager. Once you find the file wp-config.phpopen it with a text editor and enter the following line at the bottom of the file:
define(‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, false);
Once you save the file, the changes should take place, disabling WordPress revisions.
conclusion
Post reviews are an essential tool for all WordPress site owners. It’s useful when you’re trying to improve your editorial workflow and keep track of the history of a post.
You can see the modifications made to the publication, compare them and go back to one of the previous versions. If your website needs more space, you can delete some of the WordPress revisions, limit the number of revisions, or even disable the feature altogether.
We hope this tutorial on WordPress reviews has helped improve your workflow. Be sure to check out the rest of ‘s tutorials for more useful content!
Deyi is a digital marketing enthusiast, with a background in web design, content creation, copywriting, and SEO. She is part of ‘s SEO & Localization team. In her free time, she likes to develop projects, read a book or watch a good movie.
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