Options to enable/disable post revisions

Didn’t I say that the post revisions thrashed slow execution errors on me? Removing post revisions basically stopped that problem.

You’re not seeing the point. I’m using myself as an example. Think about others; they can have way more than that. They can do MUCH more than I. I know 1 megabyte is small, but think about others for bloody sake. They probably have way bigger posts than I. And of course I knew you’d bullshit me with the ‘find a better host’ crap. I was using bloody examples.

GZIP barely compressed my file – it only reduced it by ~200kb. It’s about 10% compressed for my site (A non example one).

Do explain your definition of ‘power-use’. I obliviously am mystified at your reasoning.

I’ve never said I didn’t like WordPress. What I’m blatantly saying is WordPress’ “prestige” in my mind is fading. It’s still good, but with all the lack of options and the increased amount of features which users wouldn’t want is stifling that ‘goodness’ in my mind. It’s my mind, but as you probably notice quite a few of users don’t want this. What do I mean by that? We just don’t like certain features – not the software itself.

You can sure as hell help people – it makes other lives in regards to their problems easier. But is telling them to piss off just because they want some changes a proper way of handling things? I know one person leaving isn’t going to make any difference. It never does, really. So I’d suggest you to not play that card – I never even mentioned such act.

IPB’s settings are confusing? I can agree to it to a certain extent. Extent, being that they clutter a bunch of options into one page – like 30 or so. I don’t like that either. What I’m saying is to blatantly partition options in WordPress for easier use.

To be exact, is adding one single option going to screw with WordPress’ organization of options?

I’ve created three plugins using the solutions by GamerZ and Untwisted Vortex:
Disable Revisions and Autosave plugins

You can easily deactivate Revisions, Autosave or both of them at the same time.

To be exact, is adding one single option going to screw with WordPress’ organization of options?

It’s an unnecessary option that, IMO, should not be added. Too many options make things confusing.

You understand software. You understand what the options mean. A lot of WP users do not. Look at the number of questions we see on here every day that are solved by a simple “check such and such page and turn them on/off” response…

The lack of options, the more automatic the system is = the better the software. Perfect software would have no options at all, because it would simply fit everybody’s needs and adjust to those needs automatically.

Your specific example of the problems you had is just that: Your specific case. It’s an edge case. It’s not going to happen on the majority of setups. And for those edge cases, the developers built in a kill switch. It’s not an option in the admin screens, but it is there, it does exist, and it’s fairly easy to use/find out about. So… why does it need to be an “option” on some screen somewhere again?

WordPress 2.6 has been installed over 200,000 times now. I’ve seen maybe 30-50 people complaining about revisions. QED. I think that most people have no issues with it, probably because they’re just trying to write their blogs instead of micromanage them.

@exper,
Better yet, why doesn’t WordPress just make Post Revisions a plugin?
———-
Most people probably have no issue with it because they haven’t run into any problems with it, yet. For me, I have. In fact, I didn’t have a pinky of a problem with Post Revisions until I smacked into an error. In case you haven’t noticed, this error was what I’ve been stressing about – that it dropped slow execution errors on me.

A large variety of people’s questions have been resolved because they asked here. Wouldn’t it have been much faster to have just ADDED an option so they wouldn’t need to ask? Or is this another fascade to gain more forum members/posts?

If you ask me, those 200,000+ times are probably from blogs with fairly small posts. Small posts, being a single post which has less than 30+ page scrolls (1 scroll = 3 lines. Starting from the post title to the last word of the post content. And yes, this is a literal example) of content in it. If not, maybe they have ‘much better’ hosts than I. I don’t, literally, use a free host, by the way (dreamhost). If you ask me, better CMS would be to fix any problems a user has that can be fixed or find a way to resolve it. I believe it would be better to at least have a notice on the how-to-turn-off post revisions, if there were no options for it.

Perfect softwares with no options… that can never exist. Why? People have different opinions on what they want. Just want to point that out.

until I smacked into an error

The problem is that revisions were not the cause of your problem. Having a slow, overloaded, shared host that is incapable of processing code to compare two text files in less than 30 seconds is the root cause of the error. Turning off revisions won’t fix your problem, it simply eliminates the error. You still have a slow overloaded shared hosting service.

Wouldn’t it have been much faster to have just ADDED an option so they wouldn’t need to ask?

Hah! Once you’ve been here a while, you’ll learn how untrue that is. ??

More options creates more support requests, not less.

Perfect softwares with no options… that can never exist. Why? People have different opinions on what they want.

Perfect software would respond in the way you want without you having to explicitly tell it what that is. It would behave in the way you expect it to behave, as long as you have realistic expectations.

User interfaces are a matter of manipulation of the user’s expectations. If the interface is designed correctly, then it makes the user expect a certain thing, and then it behaves in that specific manner. Options are not necessary in a perfect UI because the user always expects it to do what it actually does.

Shinsou, the decision for a new feature to be a plugin, to be in core, to be in core with options, or to be in core but modifiable by a plugin is a very hard one and is deeply considered for every feature before every release. For this particular feature, it was felt that being in core with disabling in a plugin was best for the vast majority of of bloggers.

As for server impact, post revisions is enabled for the 3.6 million blogs we host on WordPress.com that generate 1.6 million posts every week. At that scale, you can imagine that the performance and storage considerations of this feature were closely considered.

Anyway, I hope that you use the two-line config switch we built in to control the feature rather than modifying core files all over the place, which will miss bits and make it difficult if not impossible to upgrade when there is a new version or security release.

@shinsou,
I had no problems related to Revisions; but I’ve immediately found them useless to me cos my own blog it’s not driven by multiple Editors.
The Revisions scheme saturate the DB with unnecessary rows for sure in all of the case o single-editor blogs.

The plugins can be Activated and Deactivated when needed, just a simple click, so whenever WP will have these option on its core the solution seems quite easy… and it works as far as I can test.

A single thing I’ve learned about WP is… when you encounter a problem then you’ll be surely able to resolve it sooner or later searching on the net and eventually writing down a couple of code lines here or there.
That’s great!

Of course it eliminated my problem – hence it fixed it. This slow execution error didn’t appear in most of my posts – only in those which had revisions. I probably have a slow host, but it should be expected that WordPress handles it correctly with little to no problem. I believe the slow execution error is a big problem as I was unable to edit my post.

Better yet, Otto, is if the user didn’t have to add a line into your wp-conf. Maybe I haven’t been in WordPress’ community for a long time, but I’m sure a simple <url to disabling x option> is much faster than needing to download your wp-conf, edit it, and re-upload it.

And as said, theres no such thing as perfect software. One person can say one thing, another the opposite. Options are blatantly options – to toggle something you don’t want on or off. Of course, some people might like things with less options. What does that do? Limit the user capabilities. Heck, when I see “Writing” in the Settings page, I immediately believe that there should be something to toggle Post Revisions.

Now here’s my new idea in case you missed it:
Add a link into Post Revision page on the how-to disable post revisions. That would’ve also helped muched.

@matt
Why wasn’t a ‘hand written’ plugin for disabling it made with the package then? That would have greatly helped as well.

I’m not entirely sure what host you use for WordPress.com, but wow. And it’s alright; I have knowledge of TortoiseSVN and such to not screw things up.

@exper,
I know that your plugin can disable it, but I more or less know how to code PHP. All I’m saying is that I want things to be simplified. I don’t wanna go around the net or www.ads-software.com to disable something compared to looking around and carefully reading the settings. It takes too much time for me.

Now to be blatant, here is what I request, in case you’re too lazy to read:
A. Add a link on the how-to-disable-revisions in Post Revisions page.
OR
B. Do not compare two post data when editing a post. Do it only when you click a post revision.

I think wordpress is heading down the path where it will need to ask if its a multi author blog or a single author blog. A few features have trickled in that the singular author doesn’t need.

<u>For example:</u>
Post Pending
Post Revisions

After reading the arguments through and fro, I still have to conclude that I do not like backing up useless data. ie. post revisions. It’s not about how well text “compresses”. I don’t even want to spend that extra second downloading junk.

We’re not even asking for you guys to remove the feature, we just want an option to disable it. I don’t think it’s a useless option, rather an option that will make all users happy. Because those we need the revisions can happily have theirs while those who do not need it can do away with it.

I’m wondering why I’m even typing so much because the plugin by Exper works beautifully. So really, at this point of time, I don’t really care what the final decision about this is. But I guess this is all I can do to get the message out (if it even reaches anyone).

I think this was posted by someone else in another thread regarding this:

Seems like core developers are giving off more and more responsibility to plugin authors.

I actually dont mind about the Revision feature if it wasnt because I see every DAM revision ever made when I do a search on my blog??
The best ever Search plugin (Search everything) finds every Revison ever made…Sigh…And that goes for many other extended search plugins…

I think that those Search plugins have to be updates to properly browse the new DB posts table structure, or in other words they’d just jump the revisions posts.

Otto42 says: It’s an unnecessary option that, IMO, should not be added. Too many options make things confusing.

The unnecessary option is the post revisions feature itself. It’s definitely neat, but how many people really need it? The suggestion that it be an optional plug-in seems much more sensible than adding more confusion to the database for everyone whether they want it or not.

This thread qualifies as one of the funniest things I have read in a while. I cannot imagine for the life of me developers not getting the concept. We have all sorts of options in the control panel that most of us never use, and yet something as important as an option that fills your post files with junk posts (aka old revisions) is something that doesn’t need an option setting?

Otto, everything is personal preference. That is why there are options switches, plug ins, and other ways to personalize your blog experience.

Here is a great example: the privacy settings. Why does that not only have an option but a whole seperate section in the admin? What is the justification process for creating a whole new screen for a single option? How hard would it be to rename that “additional options” and add a simple “disable post revisions” on there? I would say that the privacy thing would be better served in the config file, no?

I think the users have spoken clearly here. It’s just a question of it the developers can hear them.

I think this is another example of a decision for wordpress.com’s needs instead of those of other installations.