Post Revision Issues on WordPress & BlueHost

Has your blog or website been moving slowly?

Do you run on WordPress?

If you’ve answered yes to these questions, you might want to read this whole post. 

I’ve struggled with a slow moving blog since I started blogging on WordPress, just over a year ago. I honestly have just dealt with it, saying that it’s just a blog not a business.

Last night I had something new happen though, which made me dig deeper. 

While trying to type up my post for Family Fun Friday, I hit a screen which said “database error”. Sigh. I had no idea what to do about it.

Thankfully my wonderful blog designer pointed me in a direction to start. My host. Bluehost to be exact.

I spent an hour on chat with them, and discovered that I was having 60+ second delays and timeouts due to the over 4,000 posts on my blog.

BACKUP!

I’ve been blogging a year, and I love to write, BUT I do not have anywhere near 4,000 posts! I only have 404, including this one!

After an hour of digging, the BlueHost tech discovered that I had anywhere from 1-12 duplication for EVERY SINGLE post I’ve made on this blog, since May 2011!!

He advised me that I should delete all of the “extra” revisions, and then deactivate all of the plugins on my site, to see if they were the duplication culprits.

So…..I spent the next 4 hours deleting the unnecessary revisions from my server. 4 hours.

I then deactivated all of my plugins, only to discover that they were not the duplication culprits.

At 1:30 am, I decided that I had enough for one night and went to bed.

The following morning BlueHost and I chatted again, this time testing a new site to see if the duplication kept occurring. Which it did. I was then told that it was not their issue, nor had they ever heard of this issue before. In fact, I was told that I was unintentionally causing this problem.

It was time I spent another 4-5 hours searching on my own, via Google. I couldn’t believe that BlueHost told me they had never heard of this problem. I found these issues dating back a few years, here and here. While neither of these were able to give me the answer I needed. I discovered that I wasn’t causing the problem. 🙂

The problem lies within WordPress!

AND

There is a way to fix it yourself!

This post was my lifesaver —->>   “How to Disable Post Revisions” 

I chose to use their Alternative #3 to disable all of the post revisions that kept being created on my blog, which was loading up my server with unnecessary “content”. Also, it could slow down your blog, creating timeouts, data errors, etc. as it did with me.

The last “issue” I had was remembering where my wp-settings and wp-config files were! LOL! (Hint ~ They’re on your server control panel)

Once I added the code they listed, I wrote a test post and checked within the phpMyAdmin file located on my server’s control panel for any duplication.

YAHOO! No duplication! 

Do you want to check yours now?

Here’s how to check and see if your posts are being duplicated on your BlueHost server….

1.) Log into your control panel.

2.) Locate your Database Tools and click on the “phpMyAdmin” icon.

3.) On the left of your screen, locate your sever user name and click on it.

4.) Click on the “wp_posts” link.

5.) Sort posts by clicking on “Post Date”.

6.) Scroll to the right to locate the “Post Status” and “Post Name” columns.

7.) Any post’s that have an “inherit” status AND a post name of either “auto save” or “revision”, are just unnecessary content that WordPress is saving taking up space on your server, and probably slowly down your blog.

***** Please note, I am not a professional computer technician, I did all of these steps knowing full well that it might not work, and ready to restore my blog if I messed it up.*****

Should you choose to follow these instructions, you do so at your own risk. I am only sharing what worked for me. 

I DO NOT recommend doing this if you do have not have site backup available through BlueHost. 

** Also, please note that BlueHost was correct, it was not their problem, and for the most part their techs were helpful.