Deleting revisions from the post list

  • Hi there Brice – We’ve been using your plugin to help clean up posts that have an excessive number of revisions. We appreciate your work on the plugin and have found it very helpful for speeding up site maintenance.

    Most of the time it works great, but there’s one scenario that we’ve run into several times where there’s an issue.

    Basically, if a post has an excessive number of revisions (say, several thousand), then it can hit the memory limit and throw an error when you try to visit its editing screen, especially on the Classic Editor.

    The general fix for that memory limit error is to delete some or all of its revisions. However, in the scenario mentioned above, we can’t hit your plugin’s Purge button because the post’s editing screen won’t load, so we have to do it through the database instead, which is less convenient.

    Would it be possible for you to add the Purge button to the post list screen (/wp-admin/edit.php) so that it can be called without visiting the post’s editing screen?

    That feature would greatly increase the plugin’s utility, both by working around the memory limit error and also making it faster to use on multiple posts.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Author Brice Capobianco

    (@brikou)

    Hi,
    This feature is available for several years now. You have a screenshot on the plugin description page.

    You just have to select some posts (or only one) and select the “Purge revisions” option.

    Cheers

    Thread Starter SiteBolts

    (@sitebolts)

    Hey @brikou – Thanks for the quick response. I hadn’t noticed that option on the bulk editing list.

    Unfortunately, when I tried it out just now, it looks like it still triggers a memory limit error, even when bulk editing just a single post. I guess the bulk editor must load a bunch of the post’s revision data for some reason.

    Technically it’s not your plugin causing the issue, though if you could find a way to get around that issue (like by having a separate button that calls the revision delete function directly instead of going through the bulk editor), then that would be helpful.

    Plugin Author Brice Capobianco

    (@brikou)

    Hi,
    As you mention the plugin is not in cause here. You issue is more related to server configuration issue. Did you try to had more memory to your PHP processes?
    Having more than a thousand of revisions per posts is clearly not common so you have to tweak your server configuration to adapt it to your needs.
    Best,

    Thread Starter SiteBolts

    (@sitebolts)

    Right, we know how to work around it and get the revisions deleted. I was just pointing out that your plugin can’t currently handle that use case in case you were looking to make improvements at some point. It’s fine if you consider the issue to be out of scope, though. Again, thanks for making the plugin; it’s been very helpful.

    For what it’s worth, there are a few other plugins like “Simple Revision Control” that are able to successfully delete a massive number of revisions without hitting the memory limit.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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