How to eliminate excess revisions in WordPress

Last updated December 6th, 2023 06:26

What are the revisions in articles of WordPress we have explained in detail here (article is in the czech language only, so, please, use translator if you want to read it): https://blog.jirivanek.eu/cs/2022/11/10/wordpress-a-revize/. Today we will look at this topic differently. How to eliminate excess revisions in WordPress.

In the article, I mentioned, among other things, the drawbacks of revisions, which consist in the growth of data stored in the database. Time by time, therefore, it is a good idea to remove revisions, especially when you know that there are old articles on the web that will probably no longer be significantly edited and that they will not be in a situation where they will need to revert to older variants of articles.

So always think carefully before deleting any revisions, whether you dont really need older versions of articles, or alternatively make a backup of your database instead.

I use a very simple and small plugin called Sweep to remove revisions. You can find it in the official WordPress repository, and thus its installation is done directly via administration on the plugins tab. The control of the plugin is very intuitive and simple. In the article, I will currently describe deleting only revisions for its greater simplicity. Alternatively, we may look elsewhere for a full description of the plugin.

Plugin Sweep

After installing the plugin, you can find its settings in the left panel under the “Tools” tab. When it comes to revisions, they come as first option in the plug-in. You can delete revisions with one push of the Sweep button (see image bellow). So really always think carefully about this kind of action in advance. If you don’t have a backup of the database, you’ll lose the revisions completely.