WordPress › Support » Options to enable/disable post revisions

Forums

WordPress › Support » Requests and Feedback

1 2 Next »

Options to enable/disable post revisions (34 posts)

Shinsou
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

Hi,
I'm not sure if anyone else posted this, but here it is:
I'm suggesting that WP add an option to disable post revisions (saving them and etc). Why? Because these revisions are probably unneeded for some people (like me). It takes [b]a LOT[/b] of storage + CPU to load and save them. In fact, for my site which has about 90 posts and about 10 revisions, I received an "over 30 second load" error - the diff script takes too much time finding the differences. Unluckily, I can't change the time limit for a script execution.

Regards.
rawalex
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

Shinsou, you express an opinion many people have, and there is another thread in the alpha-beta section about it. Much like with changes to remove functionality (the more tag for rss feeds) thing like this get chosen to be hardcoded rather than made an option. I can't for the life of me figure out why, but there you go.

My feeling is the average blog owner that makes typos and corrects them will end up with a post file 2 to 10 times larger depending on the number of edits they have to do. Sort of a waste of space.

I am sure someone will write a plugin to go through and remove all revision posts, as they are mostly unwanted dust.
Chris_K
Administrator
Posted 1 year ago #

Has anyone added such a suggestion to trac yet? I haven't checked, but devs would see it there.
rawalex
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

handy, I think the answer would be the same as the more tag, they discussed it sometime in the past and it isn't up for discussion in the future, no matter how many people would actually use it.
Chris_K
Administrator
Posted 1 year ago #

Perhaps weigh-in on this one? http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7294

My quick scan of trac didn't turn up much for discussions/requests related to post revisions.
Chris_K
Administrator
Posted 1 year ago #

Say, did you see this thread? http://wordpress.org/support/topic/189050?replies=4

One line added to wp-config.php and you're done.
rawalex
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

Handy, adding a line is "nice", but if it is that easy, then it should be a configuration option, not something you have to hack into each version. Remember, that sort of hack disappears on the next upgrade unless you go put it back in.

I got off the elevator at 2.5.1, I think it was just in time.
Chris_K
Administrator
Posted 1 year ago #

I don't blow away my wp-config.php on upgrades. That'd be silly (nor is it advocated last I checked).

I back it up and re-use it.

So, since we're debating from our own perceptions, from my angle I just don't see the burn. 30 seconds copy and paste and I'm set "forever."

After your rebuttal how about we then just agree to disagree and not have the OP's thread hijacked into a philosophical debate?
Shinsou
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

Hi,
Instead of adding that 'little line', I basically edited all my files which had 'revision' in it - just to permanently turn of post revisions. It's more dumb, but I'm leaving it as is for now.

Plus, why have this forum if all we ever really needed to do is post in the Trac? To add to it, do we HAVE to go to WP's forum to find out how to do certain things? It's like asking a kid to go buy an apple, but stop at an Apple Tree before continuing. Why go and buy an apple when there's a tree right in front of you? Blatantly I'm trying to say "Why go to a forum to find out something when you can just edit the settings in front of you?" - That is how most people think. Don't get the wrong idea, I love forums. I just don't love it when someone tells me to go somewhere else which has a corresponding title (i.e. Requests in a request forum be redirected to a Trac).

And if you ask me, too many features have been added in without the consent of the a variety of members. I demand a poll before something like this. If anything, pick out a few members to use the new features before releasing it. Members, being random ones. Though, some features are good, some like post revisions are pretty much crap to people like me. Literally, is it so hard to ask for an option in the Settings page? What will happen next? Do I have to add a define('WP_BLOG_TITLE', 'Shinsou\'s Blog'); to my wp-config? Do I have to add a define('WP_BLOG_URL', 'http://mysite.com'); to my wp-config? Do I have to add a define('WP_TEMPLATE_DIRECTORY', 'http://mysite.com/wp-content/themes/mytheme/index.php') to my wp-config? These are all analogies - they aren't real but I'm just picking on the ludicrousness of what's happening.

For Wordpress 2.5.1, I felt that the current features were solid and good - nothing more was required. Now things like gears and revisions have been slapped in. Do half the people even know what those things are before using it? Sure you're introducing something new - I don't mind that - but what I do mind is that if you're adding a new feature, add a bloody option for disabling it.

Shinsou.
Chris_K
Administrator
Posted 1 year ago #

Plus, why have this forum if all we ever really needed to do is post in the Trac?

Forums: Community oriented support

Trac: Developers and their features and bugs.

I demand a poll before something like this.

I try really hard not to be snarky, but that was just priceless.
Shinsou
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

I try really hard not to be snarky, but that was just priceless.

Yea, that was supposed to be an inside joke.

By forum I mean a single forum - i.e. the one we've just posted in.
PeteHoliday
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

30 seconds copy and paste and I'm set "forever."

And we're back to making users muck around in PHP files when it could have easily been included on an admin screen. It's just lazy on the part of the developers.
Allstar
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

This post revision malarky definitely needs and off switch, got 30 posts on my new portfolio site and 70 revision entries. Its almost as bad as spam filling up the comments db table.
Otto42
Moderator
Posted 1 year ago #

but what I do mind is that if you're adding a new feature, add a bloody option for disabling it.

More options are more confusing. Less options are better. Especially when there is no need for the option at all.

I have yet to hear a legitimate reason to disable post revisions. And no, "personal preference" is not a legitimate reason, IMO.

Let's put it this way... If nobody had told you about post revisions, if you had not scrolled down and saw the revision box at the bottom of the post... how exactly would post revisions impact you, in any way at all?

There is no need for an option for post revisions because there is no real good reason to turn them off.
Shinsou
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

I believe legitimate reasons were stated.
I'll list it here again:
1. Slows down posting and can causes user to receive an error in the process. Note that not everyone has the freedom to edit the php.ini file to extend execution time. Don't give us the bullshit of requiring to buy a better web host.

2. Large size. Not everyone has a large database. Think about it - if someone starts to post about 1 post a day and edits it at least 3 times to fix grammatical errors, 3 extra revision posts will be created. Over a period of 30 days, the user will have ~90+ 'posts' in their database which aren't even needed.

To add to the above statement: Backing up your files. What was once ~500 KB for me has been extended to ~1 MB (minus things from StatPress) for a backup. Eradicating the post revisions punched it down to 600 KB. This is of a duration of one week. Only two to three posts were made. As said before, don't bullshit us. Some people use free hosts as they can't use a credit card or paypal or whatever. Depending on the features of the host, they might now want to move.

If you ask me, more options aren't more confusing. That's just a sorry excuse of saying that you don't know how to bloody organize your settings. Is that what Wordpress is becoming? A sorry excuse? I hope not. I love using Wordpress, but that love is deteriorating.

For example, look at Invision Power Board. They have an abundant amount of features that can be toggled. How do they organize that? They make sub-sections. And those sub-sections aren't really hard to understand - immediately when I see "Forum Control" I know that it'll allow me to create/remove/reorder/etc forums.
Otto42
Moderator
Posted 1 year ago #

1. No, it does not slow down posting, as saving the revision takes just as much time as saving a post does.

2. Several points:

a) Those 90 posts probably take up less than 10k of space. Remember, this is TEXT in a DATABASE. Text compresses quite well, you know. Averages around 85-90%.

b) As far as your backup goes, use GZIP compression on the SQL file. A backup.sql.gz file is probably quite small indeed.

c) If a 1 meg database is exceeding your limit, then you seriously need to find a better host. Every host I've ever seen adds your space limits together, as in 100MB of space = files + database size. And finding free 100 MB hosting is a short Google away. Paid hosting (as in under $5 a month) gets you up to a gig or more.

d) It's not about MORE options, it's about USELESS options. Disabling post revisions has no legitimate use for the normal non-power-user. And power-users should know how to edit a simple text file.

e) Don't like WordPress? Switch to something else. Seriously, I'm the first person who will tell you to go find another piece of software. This is open source, free software. Free means free, as in you're free to use it, free to not use it, free to print it out and wear it as a hat for all I care. I'm willing to help you if you want to use it, but I'll be damned if I'll change my opinion just because somebody who didn't pay me one thin dime says something to the effect of they might want to use something else. By all means, don't use WordPress... that is perfectly acceptable to me, so just don't even try playing that card.

f) I've looked at IPB, and it's one of the most confusing pieces of software I've ever seen. The user interface is fairly horrible, IMO. Of course, it's not unique, most forum softwares I've seen suck in this respect.
Shinsou
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

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?
Exper
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

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.
Otto42
Moderator
Posted 1 year ago #

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.
Shinsou
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

@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.
Otto42
Moderator
Posted 1 year ago #

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.
matt
Troublemaker
Posted 1 year ago #

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.
Exper
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

@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!
Shinsou
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

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 WordPress.org 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.
Allstar
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

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
fantasycrusader
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

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.
casperse
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

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...
Exper
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

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.
ericr23
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

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.
rawalex
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

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.

WordPress.org

Forums

Options to enable/disable post revisions (34 posts)

Topic Closed

About this Topic

Tags

Code is Poetry