A very handy WordPress feature, especially for bloggers, is post revisions. It allows you to look back over earlier versions of your blog post so you can undo changes, compare two versions and revert to an earlier version.
By default, WordPress stores an infinite number of revisions. So every time you edit your blog post and save as a draft or update a published post, WordPress stores a copy on your database. Combine this with auto-saves and the number of posts you have on your blog and you can see how this space can get pretty big. You could have 20+ versions of each blog post stored! This could be vital space if you’ve got a smaller hosting package.
This tutorial will show you how to limit the number of blog post revisions that WordPress stores per post on your database as well as how to delete old post revisions from published posts.
How to limit the number of stored posts revisions
You can set restrictions so that only a set number of recent revisions are saved per post. To do that connect to your site via FTP and open the wp-config.php file in your roots directory. Find the line that says
/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */and above that line add the following
/* limit post revisions xomisse */
define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 3 );Change the number to how many revisions you want stored, plus one auto-save. The older versions will be automatically deleted once newer versions are saved.
How to Disable/Enable Post Revisions
This section will show you how to disable post revisions from being saved to your database in the future.
Open the wp-config.php file located in your roots directory and find the line that says
/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */Above that line add the following
/* disable post revisions xomisse */
define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', false );To enable post revisions again, simply replace it with
/* enable post revisions xomisse */
define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', true );How to remove old post revisions
The easiest way to do this if you aren’t very “techy” is by using a plugin, such as Better Delete Revision, Revision Control, Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions or WP Optimize.
2 responses to “How to limit and disable post revisions on WordPress to save space”
Thank you for this post. I’ve a question, “I found two wp-config files: wp-config.php and wp-config-sample, do I need to add above code in both places or only in wp-config.php is sufficient?”
Hello, just wp-config.php is needed. The other file is a sample, you can delete it if you want to clean up your directory 🙂