How to Moderate and Schedule Revisions in WordPress

WordPress has one of the most powerful revision systems available on any blogging platform.

When you start writing in WordPress, your changes will be automatically and safely saved. And, if you want to compare your current version of a post to an old version, WordPress gives you an easy side-by-side comparison. The image below shows a revision comparison in WordPress – the old content is marked in red and the new content is in green.

However, WordPress revisions have limited permissions. Revisions inherit the same permissions as the content. This means that someone on your site who can publish a post will have the ability to update that post forever. You do not have the ability to lock content after it has been published, or to publish updates.

If you want more control over revisions, check out the PublishPress Revisions plugin (previously known as “Revisionary”).

With PublishPress Revisions you can allow users to submit changes to published posts or pages. However, unlike default WordPress, these revisions can be moderated by other users. Also, unlike default WordPress, revisions can be scheduled for future publication.

PublishPress Revisions is available for you to download from WordPress.org and you can find out more at the PublishPress Revisions page on PublishPress.com.

Creating a New Revision with PublishPress Revisions

The key thing to note with PublishPress Revisions is that it only works on posts in the “Published” status.

To get started with PublishPress Revisions, I’d recommend you create a user in the “Revisor” role and use that for your testing. This “Revisor” role is designed for users who update existing content. PublishPress Revisions is available to all users on your site, but you can best see the impact of this plugin by testing as a Revisor.

First, login as your Revisor user, and then find a post that has the “Published” status.

Look in the top-right corner and you’ll see that usual “Update” button is unavailable. Instead, the “Update” button has changed to “Submit Revision”:

• Click “Update”
• You’ll now see the message, “Your modification has been saved for editorial review.”

• Click the “View Revision Queue” link and you’ll be taken to one screen where your can see all your pending revisions. You can also access this via the “Revisions” link in the WordPress admin area.

Get emails when WordPress revisions are created

PublishPress Revisions also has a notification system that can send out emails like the one shown below. The link in the email will take you directly to the Revision Queue screen where you can publish or schedule the revision.

Go to Revisions > Settings and you’ll see options for these PublishPress Revisions emails:

More about PublishPress Revisions

All-in-all, PublishPress Revisions is a great option if you want to control who can update published content on your WordPress site.

You can get the Free version on WordPress.org. There’s also a Pro version available on PublishPress.com.