WordPress 3.8.1 Revisions feature causes Database issues!

WordPress 3.8.1 Revisions feature causes Database issues!

Hello from Allan at MindVisionMedia.net, I hope this post finds you well.

I love the new WordPress versions, they are full of nice changes and features but I recently started having serious issues with my WordPress website. Load time for everything was beyond forever and most of the time whatever I was trying to accomplish timed out. Logging in was a nightmare, trying to edit a page or post was a nightmare, and dealing with my hosting company over the issues was a nightmare.

In the end here's what I learned:
The new versions (3.8.1) of WordPress have built-in a revisions feature that is great in theory, but in reality, we don't need a copy being saved every minute and we definitely don't need our hosting company trying to charge us for more database space because we have reached our quota which is what I had to deal with in my case. I was exceeding my database quota several times a day and as a result, I could not log in or get any work done, extremely frustrating to say the least.

After going around and around with my hosting company who apparently didn't have a clue when it came to my database, I started doing my own research and discovered that the "revisions" feature is causing problems everywhere. Especially for larger sites or sites with lots of posts or pages such as mine. I then researched some database plugins and settled on 2, "Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions" and also "Revision Removal", both plugins helped me accomplish my goal of deleting all revisions, setting the max revisions to (2) and optimizing the database after reducing its size to less than half its previous size! If you use WordPress, then you are familiar with these words: "Thank God for plugins"

While researching I found numerous people suffering the same issues with their database and there are tons of Google topics on the subject of reducing the database size because of the "revisions" feature in the latest version of WordPress. I am hopeful that WordPress developers will reduce the capability of the revisions feature and limit the revisions to 3-5 max. It appears that no thought was given to the impact of saving so many revisions on the database and I would expect them to correct this very soon.

We all like having a backup copy of our work and the security of knowing that if something happened like a power failure, we would have a revision to fall back on, but in one case I had 115 revisions to just one page alone! Multiply that times 30-40 pages on a site or blog and you end up with hundreds of revisions eating up your database. With so many great features added to the new version, I can't figure out why they overlooked this flaw. After a week of headaches and frustration, hours on the phone and support chat with my hosting company and hours of my own trying to research and solve my slow-loading and hanging problem, I am finally back to normal thanks to those 2 plugins.

So for anybody else experiencing slow page load, slow log in, slow page or post editing, check your revisions, if the numbers are high, it could be that the number of revisions you have is slowing down your database and site and could cause you to be dead in the water as far as getting any work done. So far I love everything about the new WordPress except for the "revisions" feature, it is too much (over-kill) so please WordPress Developers, add options or limit the number of revisions that are saved as well as the time between revisions being saved, and add some built-in controls to delete revisions or set how many revisions you want to keep.

We all need to give our feedback to WordPress so they can resolve this issue ASAP so please chime in on this subject and let them know. Thanks!

By
Allan Whitney
Owner/Administrator
MindVisionMedia.net