Install and use Better Delete Revision WordPress plugin

In this article I'll be showing you how to install and use the Better Delete Revision plugin for WordPress. This plugin will allow you to clean up and remove old page and post revisions that are no longer needed in your WordPress database.

By default WordPress after version 2.6 started storing revisions of all pages and posts in the database. While this can be great if you happen to make a lot of edits and lose some content, if you have a lot of needless revisions stored in your WordPress database this can be inefficient.

If WordPress revisions don't sound like something you need for your website, I'd recommend also reading my article on how to limit or disable WordPress revisions which goes more in-depth explaining WordPress revisions and also walks you through adjusting how they work.

Install Better Delete Revision WordPress plugin

Using the steps below I'll walk you through how to install the Better Delete Revision WordPress plugin on your WordPress site.

1. Login to your WordPress admin dashboard.
2. In the left-hand menu, hover over Plugins and click on Add New.
3. In the Search text box type in better delete revision and click Search Plugins.
4. Next click on Install Now beside the listing for the Better Delete Revision plugin. There will be a pop-up confirmation window that asks Are you sure you want to install this plugin? click OK on that.
5. You should then see that the Better Delete Revision plugin was installed successfully, finally click on Activate Plugin so that you can use the plugin.

Using Better Delete Revision WordPress plugin

The steps below descibe how to use the Better Delete Revision plugin now that you should have it installed on your WordPress site.

1. Login to your WordPress admin dashboard.
2. In the left-hand menu, hover over Settings and click on Better Delete Revision.
3. On the Better Delete Revision Manager page, click on Check Revision Posts.

You should see all of the duplicate WordPress page and post revisions stored in your WordPress database on the next screen. You can then click on Yes, I would like to delete them! (A Total Of 12) to remove those stored revisons from the database.

You should then see that the found duplicate revisions were deleted.

4. If you go back to the Better Delete Revision Manager page, you can also click on Optimize Your Database to check if any of your WordPress database tables should be optimized.

   In this case we can see that none of our tables are marked red, so they don't need to be optimized. If you did have any tables that need optimization, you can just click on the Optimze WordPress Database button.

   After it's done the plugin should display a message of Optimization of database completed!

You should now understand how to install and use the Better Delete Revision WordPress plugin to help clean up your WordPress database from saved WordPress revisions.