On WordPress Bugs, Not Features

“It’s a feature, not a bug!”

It’s a classic line. A Microsoft line. About how bugs in software aren’t really bugs, they’re undocumented features.

WordPress 2.6 has a new feature called “Post Revisions.” Basically, every time you edit a post, you can “roll back” the post and undo changes, as users can with Wikipedia.

It sounds like a nifty idea.

In practical terms, it isn’t. It’s really more of a bug. A well-intentioned bug. But still a bug.

Why? Each “revision” is an entirely new row in the WordPress database. Edit a post to add another tag? That’s another row. Edit a post to fix a spelling mistake? That’s another row. Edit a post ten times, and you’ve added ten new rows to your WordPress data table.

And WordPress doesn’t let you turn it off.

Fortunately, WordPress guru Lester Chan found a way. An edit to the wp-config file turns off post revisions.

But, turning it off still leaves junk rows in the database.

Lester gives some SQL code to delete the rows.

I have a better idea.

A few years ago, code was posted in the WordPress support fora to turn off comments after so many days. The way it worked was that, whenever something was done to a post — from posting to editing to leaving a comment — this routine would run. If a post had open comments and it was more than 21 days old, the plugin would close the comments on the post.

It occurred to me that I could turn that code into something that went through the WordPress post table, looked for revision posts and turn them into draft posts. Then, the next time I wanted to write a post, rather than start up a new post, I could “recycle” one of these draft posts — and save a line in the database table.

I looked at the code. I studied my WordPress database tables. I thought. I wrote some code. I crossed my fingers. And she flew. 🙂


<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Revision To Draft
Version: 1.0
Plugin URI: http://www.allyngibson.net/?p=1973
Description: Change post Revisions to Drafts
Author: Allyn Gibson
Author URI: http://www.allyngibson.net/
*/

function revision_to_draft() {
global $wpdb, $tableposts;

if (!isset($tableposts))
$tableposts = $wpdb->posts;

$wpdb->query("
UPDATE $tableposts
SET post_type = 'post', post_status = 'draft', post_content = ''
WHERE (post_type = 'revision')
");

$wpdb->query("
UPDATE $tableposts
SET post_date = '0000-00-00 00:00:00', post_date_gmt = '0000-00-00 00:00:00'
WHERE (post_status = 'draft')
");
}

add_action('publish_post', 'revision_to_draft', 7);
add_action('edit_post', 'revision_to_draft', 7);
add_action('delete_post', 'revision_to_draft', 7);
add_action('comment_post', 'revision_to_draft', 7);
add_action('trackback_post', 'revision_to_draft', 7);
add_action('pingback_post', 'revision_to_draft', 7);
add_action('edit_comment', 'revision_to_draft', 7);
add_action('delete_comment', 'revision_to_draft', 7);
add_action('template_save', 'revision_to_draft', 7);
?>


You need only to upload it, activate it, post a test comment, and then deactivate the plugin. (There’s no reason to leave it active, as once you’ve changed all the revisions over to drafts, you don’t need to do it again, and everytime you do do something, the plugin would run, slowing down your server for no good reason.)

If you’re on WordPress 2.6 and you don’t want to gunk up your database table with useless rows, follow Lester’s instructions to turn off post revisions, and run the plugin to change your revisions into drafts.

It’s that simple. 😉