How to turn off WP Post Revisions

18. Jan, 2012 0 Comments

Post revisions can be helpful for many users, but some users prefer to disable this default feature. You may have thousands of posts and are noticing a database slowdown, this will help. Maybe you just don’t want to use this feature. Let’s disable it!

How to disable WordPress Post Revisions

Do you prefer a Plugin or Code?

Code Method:

Disabling the WordPress’ Revision Management feature is simple:

Open your wp-config.php file in the root directory of your WordPress installation.

Add this snippet of code at the top of the file (or bottom):

//disable WP Post Revisions
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false);

false, 0: do not store any revisions (except the one autosave per post)

Plugin Method

There’s a number of plugins that will keep you away from the code and safely deleting your revisions:

Revision Control is the most popular WP Revision management plugin. There’s also No Revisions which is less popular but gets the job done

How to Delete Existing Post Revision from Database

MySQL Query Method

For Advanced Users: Open up phpMyAdmin (SQL Pro) or what-have-you and run the follow query. If you like to

DELETE a,b,c
FROM wp_posts a
LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships b ON (a.ID = b.object_id)
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta c ON (a.ID = c.post_id)
WHERE a.post_type = 'revision'

*Disclaimer: Perform a db backup prior to running any queries to delete from your database

Plugin Method

The following plugins do the trick just fine (and perhaps “Better”):

Better Delete Revision

Delete-Revision

Why is WP_POST_REVISIONS enabled by Default?

While I cannot find an official explanation, my consensus is that many users find this feature an easy way to backup your posts and revert. WordPress is providing piece-of-mind, saving users from data loss. This feature is not available on many other popular CMS platforms.

I hope this article helps my fellow WordPress Community Memebers!