Before publishing any article on a WordPress site, the editor or blogger spends a long time modifying and changing the content of the article until it appears in the ideal form. He also corrects spelling errors, checks punctuation, and ensures the correctness of grammar before publishing the article.
This enormous effort and time that the article takes before publishing it, would cause a big problem if it was all in vain due to some error in the browser, the Internet, or any other reason, right? Well, there is no need to worry about such incidents, as WordPress has a default feature called (revision history) that helps save the content with all its previous modifications.
Therefore, today in this article, we will present to you a complete guide through which we will introduce you to the revision history in WordPress and how to use it in the optimal way that ensures the maximum benefit from it.
What is revision history?
When each update of the article’s content, whether by pressing the ( Save Draft) , ( Publish ), or ( Update ) button, a backup copy of the article is created and added to the revision history, which contains all previous versions of the article.
These previous versions of the article enable you to undo errors and return to previous saved versions of the article in the revision history. It also protects your work from sudden loss that may occur in cases such as turning off the power from the computer, allowing you to easily retrieve the last saved version of the article.
It is worth noting that WordPress offers, in addition to the revision history feature, another feature, which is automatic article saving (AutoSave), which occurs automatically every 60 seconds to save you if you forget to save your article before exiting or if some error occurs while writing.
What is the importance of review history?
Previously, WordPress did not have a feature to display revision history, so the revisions feature was added since the release of WordPress 2.6 to solve basic problems that frequently occurred with users.
For example, a browser failure, an Internet outage, or a power outage from the computer are all possible things that may happen, and may cause content to be lost and hours of work to be wasted, but they can always be bypassed by returning to previous versions or by using the auto-save feature.
Another benefit of the revision log is that it helps to review the article and ensure that all errors in it are corrected by displaying the most recent version next to the previous version that contains the errors to facilitate their comparison.
As for articles in which several authors contribute simultaneously, organizing the work using the revision log is easier for the team leader. Where he can simply see all the additions made to the article, which authors added them, and when they were added.
How to view revision history
You can access the revision history of any article by opening the Gutenberg article editor and clicking on the ( Settings ) button. From the ( Article ) section, an option will appear containing the number of revisions that have been made to the article. By clicking on it, you will be taken to the revision history page, which contains all previous versions of the article.
It should be noted that the number of revisions option will not appear unless the article has been saved at least twice previously. That is, the option will appear starting with 2 or more reviews .
When you open the revision history page, you will see the last two versions of the article, the current one and the one before it, side by side. The revision record depends on comparing each of two successive versions, the older of which is labeled with the phrase ( removed ) and the most recent with the phrase ( added ).
To facilitate comparison, the changes in the article between the two versions are colored as follows:
- Deleted text is colored red.
- Added text is colored green.
The horizontal moving bar at the top of the page helps you move between all previous versions of the article by moving the marker above it and shows you the date and time of the version and who created it. You can also move between versions using the ( Previous ) and ( Next ) buttons.
Compare two previous non-consecutive versions
By default, non-consecutive versions of an article are not displayed in the revision history. That is, when viewing a previous version, the version immediately preceding it will appear next to it only for comparison between them. But what if you want to make a comparison between two non-consecutive versions (the second and fifth, for example)?
To do this you can simply tick ✔ on the checkbox (compare any two reviews) to activate the option, and you will then see two ticks on the horizontal moving bar at the top of the page; You can move each mark individually to choose the two versions that you want to compare, as the details of each version will appear, including the time, date, and name of the writer, as shown in the following image.
How to restore a previous version of revision history
If you see that one of the previous versions of the article is better than the current version and decide to restore it, you can do so by returning to the version through the revisions history, and then clicking the (Restore this review) button. You will then be taken to the article editor page with the article returning to the version you chose.
Note : There is no need to click on the ( Update ), ( Publish ) or ( Save Draft ) button to complete the process of restoring the previous version, as WordPress does not display a message stating that the restoration process was successful despite publishing the restored version directly.
How to view the autosave copy
WordPress automatically saves the article every 60 seconds to prevent wasted effort in the event of any emergency. But there is only one AutoSave copy and each new AutoSave copy replaces the previous one, unlike revision history copies.
If you exit the article editing page without saving the changes, you will be given the option to return to the latest auto-save version when you return to the article, and WordPress will display a message informing you that “There is an auto-save for this article that is newer than the version below.” Click on the “View AutoSave” link at the bottom of this message to view this saved copy as shown in the following image.
You will then be taken to a page that looks exactly like the revision history page, through which you can compare the current version with the autosave version, and you can restore it if you wish by pressing the (Restore this autosave ) button.
Manage revision history
Although review history has indispensable benefits for WordPress website owners, in some cases it may slow down the site’s performance and thus affect its SEO.
This problem occurs on large sites, especially those that have a large number of articles, where there are several reviews for each article, which leads to storing huge numbers of reviews in the site’s database.
This huge number of stored reviews occupies a large amount of storage space in databases, which also increases the time and space of the site’s periodic backup process , which is conducted to save its data from loss. Therefore, the process of managing article reviews is extremely important and is carried out through the following steps:
Specify the maximum number of stored reviews per article
First, you can specify the maximum number of reviews that WordPress will store in the revision history of each article. Any new review in excess of this number will lead to the deletion of the oldest review. Thus, the number of reviews stored in databases is reduced by not making the field of reviews open.
To do this, you must install the WP Revisions Control plugin on the site, by going to the ( Add-ons ) section in the control panel of the WordPress website, and then clicking on ( Add New ). After that, you must type the name of the extension in the search box, so that it appears in the search results. Then click on ( Install Now ) and then the ( Activate ) button.
If you need a greater explanation of the plugin installation process, you can see our article on how to install a WordPress plugin and activate it on your site correctly .
After activating the add-on, you must go to the ( Write ) option within the ( Settings ) section, and scroll the screen down until you find the (WP Revisions Control) settings. From here, specify the maximum number of revisions for articles to be 10, for example, as shown in the image below. If you wish, you can specify the number of revisions for pages and custom (CSS) formats as well.
Now click on the ( Save Changes ) button to apply the new settings to the revision history.
Delete revision history
If you want to reduce the size of your WordPress site’s databases, you can do so in two ways:
Delete revision history for a specific article
You may notice that some articles (especially those that are worked on by more than one writer) have a large number of reviews. If the article reaches its final form and is published, you can delete previous versions stored in the revision history if you no longer need them.
The WP Revisions Control plugin provides the option to do this by opening the article whose revision history you want to delete. You will find a list of all previous reviews at the end of the article editor page. Click on the (Purge these revision) button and refresh the page, after which you will notice that all revisions to the selected article have been deleted. From here you can also specify the maximum number of reviews for the article itself.
Delete all reviews of all site articles
If you want to reduce the size of your WordPress site’s databases as much as possible, you should delete all article reviews on your site from the databases. To do this, you must install the WP-Optimize plugin on your site.
After installing and activating the plugin, go to the (WP-Optimize) tab on the WordPress control panel and then choose (Database).
Place a ✔ mark next to the (Clean all post revisions) option, and then click the (Run optimization) button to delete all revisions for all articles from your site’s database.
Deactivate revision history for all articles
If you want to cancel the review history feature for any new articles written on the site so that no reviews are stored in the databases. You can do this simply by adding the same WP Revisions Control that we installed previously.
Then go to the ( Settings ) section, then choose ( Writing ), and scroll the screen down until you find the (WP Revisions Control) settings, then enter in the number of revisions allowed for articles field the value 0 so that no revision for any article is allowed to be saved.
If you want, you can also disable page revisions and custom CSS styling in the same way. Then click the ( Save Changes ) button.
To reactivate the revision history feature for articles, you can change the allowed number of revisions from 0 to any higher number you want. Or you can simply disable or delete the WP Revisions Control plugin from your site.
The problem is that the revision history does not appear in the article editor
Now that you know your review history, you’ll definitely want to use it, but what if you can’t find it in its usual place? Well, there is no need to worry, as the feature is definitely present on your site as long as you are working on a recent version of WordPress. The reason for its disappearance is because:
- Your website’s hosting company does not activate this feature by default. Then you must contact the company’s technical support service to do so.
- Some types of templates or article editors do not support the revision history feature or hide it when installed on the site.
- Don’t forget that an article must be saved at least two times before the revision history appears in it.
How to restore only part of a previous version
Sometimes you may want to restore part of a previous review without restoring the entire review. Unfortunately, there is no direct way to do this using WordPress. But you can simply select the text you want to retrieve, copy it from a previous review, and then paste it into the current version of the article.
Since previous revisions in the revision history appear in HTML, you can make it easier to paste the portion of text you want to retrieve by switching the article editor to HTML mode. To do this, click on the ⋮ sign in the upper right corner of the article editor page, and then click on “Code Editor.”
Permissions required to use the revision log
As we know, there are several types of users who can access the control panel of the WordPress content management system. Each type of them has different powers that qualify it to do specific things only, in order to ensure that everyone does not easily access site data, in order to enhance protection and security.
In the same way, not all users have the same permissions when it comes to the revision log, but rather the permissions differ from one level to another as follows:
- Administrators and editors have access to all change logs for all articles.
- Writers can only control the review history of the article they write.
- Contributors also have control over the revision history of an article they write, but when it is in draft-only status, if it is published they will never have access to the revision history again.
Thus, we have reached the conclusion of our article in which we learned about the review log, how to manage the review log professionally through custom add-ons, and how to take advantage of all the advantages offered by the review log to present the content to your visitors in the best possible way.
