I was horrified that I was able to overwrite last night’s blog post by mistake (from my iPhone) but thankfully it all turned out okay, by taking advantage of the cool feature in WordPress – I apologise in advance if you already know about this. Here are the steps I took to mess things up and then the steps I took to fix them again (I wouldn’t want this happening to you).
How I overwrote the blog post
- 8.35pm last night, I posted Note 347 from my computer.
- On the train on the way home from work today, I went into a draft post on the WordPress app on my iPhone. It was headed up Note 347 with no content, so I thought it was the blank post for today. (Note: I should have refreshed the screen at this point).
- Forgetting that I was actually on Note 348 today, I started typing in a few notes (entirely my fault).
- I then happily clicked ‘update’ on the WordPress app!
- When I got home, I logged onto WordPress on my computer to continue with today’s post and noticed that there was no post for yesterday – I couldn’t understand why it was missing.
Panic set in for 30 seconds at least when I realised that yesterday’s post (that took me ages to write) had been overwritten by some random train thoughts! …but then remembered something, and this is how I sorted it out…
How I fixed the issue
- I took a deep breath and thought there must be a way I can get this back!
- I recalled seeing something a few weeks ago about WordPress keeping a copy of the post every time you click ‘save draft’.
- I went to the bottom of the screen and saw a section headed ‘revisions’ containing several versions of the post, with an option to restore each of them.
- I selected the previous version and clicked ‘restore’ and the original note 347 from yesterday appeared.
- This put the post back to a ‘draft’ status, so I had to publish it again (I apologise if this sent another email to everyone).
Phew – my post was back and still had the ‘likes’ on it from yesterday.
Note: the notes that I typed on the train were still in my iPhone – but with a few clicks I think everything is back to normal (I’ll save those notes for tomorrow). At least I didn’t mess things up again!
No harm done AND it gave me a post for today!
Until tomorrow…
Sandra
www.sandramadeira.com
18 days of My Writing Challenge to go…
My Writing Notebook 
I don’t know how you do it on the iPhone, it drives me mad….WAY too small lol 😉
Xx
Posted by Vikki (The View Outside) | April 13, 2012, 8:15 amI know, but I think I’ve just got so used to it. It’s also the only thing with wifi when I’m out and about 🙂
Posted by Sandra Madeira | April 13, 2012, 1:25 pmHi Sara! This post saved my life today. I accidentally saved blank versions of 2 posts, and didn’t know how to restore it. Good thing I stumbled upon your blog. This is a very helpful post 🙂
https://ninasogue.wordpress.com/2016/04/07/restoring-old-versions-of-wordpress-posts/
Posted by ninasogue | April 7, 2016, 10:26 am