Why so many copies in the Mysql data base?

youre talking about revisions, I assume?

Just turn them off.

Use the search box in the upper right hand corner, and search for disable revisions.

Not exactly. The post was only published twice, once to attract attention of my editor, the next when my editor corrected anything I typed or spelled wrong. This process left over 10 files on my MySQL data base.

Thank you for directing me to the disable revisions link. I like the idea of rolling back if I really screw up, but the extra work of dumping extra files when I am satisfied, should be corrected by an option on the control panel. And no, I don’t know anything about programing, only what is not working as I would expect. Not really a complaint either, only a suggestion to be looked at. One more question though, are all the files I found reliant upon the previous file or can I just dump files as if they are duplicate files in the db?

Thanks again
Kevin

I don’t understand half of what you just typed. What “files” are you talking about? Databases don’t have “files” in them.

If you make 10 saves to the post, then that’s 10 revisions. The autosave functionality creates one (and only one) revision as well. And these don’t create any sort of “files”, they create new rows in the posts table.

And it not “abuse” of the database, because this is what databases are designed to do. They are designed to hold data. Keeping revisions requires holding some data. There’s nothing wrong with that.

I think what you’re overlooking is that this is a database, and database are not “files” or anything of the sort. They don’t work the way you apparently think that they do.

OK, wrong terms. When I start my phpmyadmin and look at what I thought were files and browsed the wp-posts, ID 204 through 215 are all for the same post. This is typical, but not as pronounced for my other posts.
When using a word processor, saving my work appends or replaces my work. The down side of this is it is much harder to roll back to past work, for this I love wordpress. If a pop up appeared when I hit the publish button for the first time asked if I wanted to dump all ( I call them fragments of the post) leaving only the completed work, I would find this very convenient. For transparency I want to keep revisions to completed posts, but have no reason to keep fragments of my work before I publish, this only takes up space on the servers file system.( the abuse)

I want to save revisions, just not the ones saved while completing my work.

I would like to have the terminology used in this community committed to memory, but my memory has failed me. Forgive my lack of communicating skills. I hope this comment clears up what I am trying to say, if not please keep up the dialog.

Kevin

When using a word processor, saving my work appends or replaces my work.

Hah! That’s what you think. Word, to pick an example, saves revisions and changes as well. You just can’t see them by default.

this only takes up space on the servers file system

It’s all plain text. It’s really not as big as you think it is.

I want to save revisions, just not the ones saved while completing my work.

There are several plugins around to give you control over how many revisions are kept and such, but for the most part, unless you are severely limited on space, I would not bother. Uploading one image to a post takes the same amount of space as more than 50 revisions, on average.

Here’s the bottom line: If you had not looked at the database, would you have ever really noticed or cared how it did it? Let WordPress worry about the backend. It’s better at it.

You got it! if they don’t take much space I won’t worry.
Thanks for the information, I will let you worry about the details as long as they won’t affect me.

Kevin