Imagine a broken template or a plugin code, website crash or writing a post and deleting it, only to realize the previous draft was better. But the issue is you cannot go back to the previous version. Scary isn’t it? But don’t panic, with WordPress it’s easy to take backups and undo changes to the code as well as posts alike with backup and restore.
In this post, we’ll learn how to undo changes in WordPress to restore your WordPress website. Let’s see what it is all about.
What is Post Revisions?
Post Revisions or Revisions is an inbuilt feature of WordPress that stores a post as a revision either when you click on save or as auto-save. In an autosave feature, the old text is replaced by the modified one ever 60 seconds. On completion of the post, when you click save, update or publish, a new version of the revised post is stored in the database.
Similar to an individual blog post, you can even restore the WordPress site to a previous date, for that you will need to have a backup database file. I’ll be covering both these changes with detailed steps in this post.
Why and When to use Post Revisions?
One of the most commonly asked questions is, “When there is Undo and Redo available, why should I opt for post revisions?” or “how does post revision really help?”. Well, the answer to this is simple, with post revisions you can undo changes in WordPress posts you had made long back. Undo option only works till your window is not closed. Once you close your post, and then reopen again and decide to switch it won’t work. Post Revision comes handy at this time. Also, you can switch your draft any number of times, make the required changes and then publish it when needed.
Another big advantage of post revisions is that, if you have multiple authors on your WordPress website, you can view each others post and see what changes were made to the article. This helps in better productivity and enhancement of your website content.
Steps to Undo Changes in WordPress Installation
1 – Steps to Restore the Previous Version of a WordPress site
There are several ways to restore your WordPress site to the previous version, installing a plugin that helps in restoring your backup like BackupBuddy, using phpMyAdmin for database backup, using website backup tool Codeguard and, manually restoring using FTP.
We’ll see how Codeguard helps in backup with the following steps;
Step I: Registering Domain Name on Codeguard
The first and foremost step for registering your domain name on Codeguard is to add the add-on to the WordPress website you wish to have a backup of. You can purchase Codeguard at affordable prices from ResellerClub.
Step II: Adding Your Website
Once you login into your Control Panel and click on the domain you’ve purchased Codeguard for. Over here click, View Dashboard and follow the steps to Add your Website.
Step III: Adding your Database to Codeguard
Visit the Codeguard dashboard and click on the website you wish to restore. Click on the Database tab and add the database.
Step IV: View Backups taken by Codeguard
Should you wish to view all the backups taken by Codeguard, go the dashboard and click on the website or database link under My Sites. Here, you can select the date you want to return back to.
Step V: Restore your data from the backup
Lastly, go to the Restore tab on your dashboard to restore your WordPress website.
For more detailed steps, you can even refer ResellerClub’s Knowledge Base.
2 – Steps to Undo Changes for an Individual Blog Post
Now that we’ve seen the steps to undo changes in WordPress, let us now see what post revisions does.
Step I:
Write your post and save it, when you open it once again on the right-hand corner you see a new tab, Revisions that shows the number of edits done to the post. Currently, our post shows 2 revisions and an option to Browse.
Step II:
Once you click on Browse, you will see the different versions of your post. In our post, we see the two revisions made. On the left-hand side is the original post, and on the right, we see the revision made that is highlighted in green.
If you have more than 2 revisions, you can move the scrolling bar at the top of current revision to see the changes made.
Step III:
If you wish to restore a previous version, select the ‘Revision’ you wish to restore and click on ‘Restore this Revision’ and WordPress will automatically save this as your current post revision. After this, you can save your post as a draft or publish it, as you want.
Conclusion:
Post Revisions and Codeguard are the easiest ways to undo changes in WordPress, as it saves you a lot of time and is hassle-free. Have you used either of them before? If yes, do share with us your experience.
Hope this was helpful if you have any queries regarding this feel free to leave a comment below.
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