What is Post Revisions?
Post revisions is a WordPress feature that allows you to undo changes and go back to an earlier version of your posts and pages.
For each draft you are working on, WordPress automatically saves a temporary revision. This type of revision is called auto-save.
WordPress stores an auto-save every 60 seconds. It also automatically replaces the older version with the new auto-save.
The autosave feature helps you restore the content if something goes wrong before you can save it. For example, if your browser crashed or your computer hanged while writing, then you can restore your latest draft from the autosave.
WordPress also saves post revisions each time a user clicks on the save, update, or publish button. Unlike auto-saves, these revisions are permanently stored in the WordPress database.
You can locate, browse, and revert back to any of these revisions from the post edit screen.
Why You Should Use Post Revisions
Almost every WordPress user can benefit from post revisions. Writing great content requires a lot of tweaking and edits. Post revisions allow you to see your process and take a bird’s eye view of how your post has evolved.
You can then switch between different states of your draft, make changes, and make your article perfect for publishing.
For multi-author WordPress sites, post revisions allow editors to easily manage the work of multiple authors. You can see who made changes to an article, what changes they made, and so on.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to use post revisions to improve your WordPress posts and pages.
How to use Post Revisions to Undo Changes in WordPress
WordPress displays the number of revisions under the ‘Document’ panel on the post/page edit screen.
You can find that on the right-hand side of your post editor screen. Clicking on the ‘Revisions’ will take you to post revisions screen.
The post revision screen will show you the latest revision of the post with a scrollbar on top. Sliding the button on the scroll bar will take you to earlier revisions of the post.
Changes made in each revision will be highlighted in green and pink colors. On the top, you can see the user who made these changes, time, and other information.
WordPress will also let you know if a revision is an autosave or a draft.
You can use the next and previous buttons to move around revisions.
Plus, you can check the box on top that says ‘Compare any two revisions’. Doing so will split the scrollbar button into two, and you can take each button to a different revision and compare the difference between two distant revisions.
To restore a revision, you can simply click on Restore This Revision or Restore This Autosave button.
WordPress will restore the selected revision as your current post revision, and you can then save it as a draft.
Keep in my mind that restoring to an earlier revision will not delete the latest version of your post. Instead, WordPress will store it in the database as another revision.
Using post revisions with Classic WordPress editor
In case you haven’t upgraded your WordPress to Gutenberg and still using the Classic Editor, then you’ll find the post revisions in the publish meta box on the right panel of the post/page edit screen.
To view the post revisions, you can simply click the ‘Browse’ link next to the number of revisions. Apart from this, the post revisions work similarly in both the Classic Editor and Gutenberg.