Have you ever had the gut-wrenching experience of losing content? It’s not a fun situation to be in. Fortunately, with the Autosave WordPress feature, you won’t ever have to go through similar circumstances on the publishing software. With its file-saving capabilities, it can help you prepare for challenges like power outages, browser crashes, or user errors.
📚 Read on to learn how to get back to your work quickly and easily when you face these stumbling blocks. This post will tell you everything you need to know about the Autosave WordPress feature.
What is the Autosave WordPress feature?
Ultimately, the goal of the Autosave WordPress feature is to restore your content in case of issues during the modification process.
The default autosave interval is 60 seconds, but this may differ based on the settings of your web host. For every post or page you create, there will only be one autosave, which the system will overwrite every time. In case several people are working on the same file, WordPress will save one revision per editor. Any autosave information will be available in the status bar below the content editor.
👉 Changing the autosave settings requires modifying the wp-config.php file in the root directory. With this, you can perform the following actions:
- Enabling autosave
- Disabling autosave
- Changing the autosave interval
How Autosave works in WordPress
Restoring autosaved content is easy. WordPress will warn you if you try to leave the editor without saving your modifications to the page or post. Then, it will notify you if an autosave is available when you reopen the editor. You can load it by clicking on Restore the backup.
Any time you lose content, simply reload your browser. In most cases, with the Autosave WordPress feature enabled, you can access the most recent backup with a single click.
You can find autosaved content in the wp_post table as a revision named {post ID}-Autosave. It should be visible under your post content and other changes. Note that these files will only be visible when you click these buttons: Save Draft, Publish, or Update.
WordPress Autosaves vs Revisions 🥊
Some people get confused, but WordPress Autosaves are not the same as WordPress Revisions. Since the release of WordPress 3.6, the Autosave feature has been available for users. It saves a copy of what you type as you edit a post or page.
On the other hand, WordPress Revisions provides you with a historical trail of the changes you make to your content. While WordPress Autosave helps you recover data after technical problems, WordPress Revisions is useful in human error cases.
These features may serve different purposes, but they work together to prevent users from losing their work.
Conclusion on the Autosave WordPress feature 🧐
If you want to create standout WordPress pages without coding expertise, themes and plugins can help you do just that. The Autosave WordPress feature is one of the thousands of accessories you can use to make your content creation life easier. There are many others to choose from.
