WordPress is a powerful content management system, but out of the box, it includes features that can have a performance impact—especially on high-traffic websites or those hosted on shared servers. One such feature is post revisions and auto-drafts, which can quickly bloat your database. While these features are useful for content recovery and version control, many developers and site owners prefer to disable them to streamline database usage and improve performance.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to completely disable post revisions and auto-drafts in WordPress by making changes to both the 'functions.php' file and the 'wp-config.php' file.
Before diving into the "how," let’s quickly review the "why":
So, if you're confident in your editing practices and regularly back up your content, disabling these features can be a smart optimization tactic.
WordPress automatically creates an "auto-draft" every time you create a new post or page and don’t save it. To disable auto-drafts, you need to intercept the post-saving process and alter its behavior.
Open your theme’s functions.php file. You’ll find it under:
wp-content/themes/your-theme/functions.phpAdd the following code snippet:
// Disable Auto-Drafts
function disable_auto_drafts($data, $postarr) {
if ($data['post_status'] == 'auto-draft') {
$data['post_status'] = 'pending';
}
return $data;
}
add_filter('wp_insert_post_data', 'disable_auto_drafts', 10, 2);WordPress keeps a copy of every version of a post or page you edit, which is great for editing history—but not great for performance or disk space.
To globally disable post revisions, again modify your functions.php file:
// Disable Post Revisions
if (!defined('WP_POST_REVISIONS')) {
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false); // Disable post revisions globally
}To ensure that revisions and auto-saving are completely turned off across your entire WordPress installation, make additional changes in the wp-config.php file.
The wp-config.php file is located in the root directory of your WordPress installation:
/public_html/wp-config.php// Disable Post Revisions
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false);
// Increase Autosave Interval to practically disable it
define('AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 100000); // in seconds (~27 hours)The WP_POST_REVISIONS constant here further enforces disabling revisions across your site.
AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL is set to a very high number (100,000 seconds), which effectively disables autosave without breaking the editor. WordPress will attempt to autosave only after 27 hours—by which time the editing session is likely long gone.
Disabling these features only prevents new auto-drafts and revisions. It does not delete existing ones from your database. You can clean up old entries using a plugin like:
Or manually via SQL (advanced users only):
DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = "revision";
DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_status = "auto-draft";By disabling auto-drafts and post revisions in WordPress, you're taking a proactive step toward optimizing your site's performance. Especially for sites with high content turnover or those hosted on resource-limited servers, this small change can lead to significant improvements in database size, page speed, and overall efficiency.
Remember, while WordPress offers helpful features for content creators, it’s okay to trim the fat if you don’t need every single one of them—especially when performance is a priority.
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