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How To Undo Changes in WordPress?

Last Updated : 27 Sep, 2024
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WordPress allows you to choose from thousands of plugins and widgets to help optimize the functionality of your website. Undoing changes in WordPress is an essential skill for web administrators, developers, and bloggers. Mistakes can happen, whether it's accidental deletion of content, modifications in the theme, or plugin settings going wrong. WordPress provides several methods to revert or undo changes efficiently. This guide covers multiple approaches, including using revision history, backups, and plugins, to restore the previous state of your website.

These are the following approaches To Undo Changes in WordPress:

Using Post Revisions

WordPress has a feature that automatically saves the history of changes as they are done called Revisions. This inbuilt feature allows you to easily go back to the previous version of your content without using any additional tools. The syntax for using the "Revisions" feature is listed below.

Steps To Undo Changes in WordPress using Post Revisions

Step 1: Go to the specific post or page in the WordPress editor.

Step 2: Click on the "Revisions" link in the post settings sidebar.

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Go to the post and click on "Revisions"

Step 3: Browse through previous revisions and click on "Restore This Revision" to undo the changes.

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Scroll through the Previous Revisions, choose the changes you want to undo and then click on "Restore This Revision"

Step 4: By clicking on "Restore" the previous version are loaded into the editor, the post is restored to that state and the changes are undone.

Restoring from the Backup

If some major changes are made in your website that break your site such as a plugin conflict or any update that leads your theme to crash, one of the good option is restoring the previous version of your site using the Backup. Hosting plugins provide like UpdraftPlus offer services such as one-click bakup. The steps to restore the site using a backup is listed below.

Steps To Undo Changes in WordPress by Restoring from the Backup

Step 1: Access your hosting provider's backup manager or a plugin like UpdraftPlus.

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Go to the Dashboard and choose "add new" under the Plugins section


Step 2: Go to the Settings section and set the File Backup Schedule and do the same in the data base backup option and then choose the remote storage.
Press "Save Changes" after you have been authenticated by the Plugin.

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Choose the UpdraftPlus Plugin

Step 3: Locate the backup that you would want to restore.

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Locate the Backup

Step 4: Select "Restore" and confirm the actions.

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Click on Restore to get the Backup

Your website will return to the original state it was in before the changes were done including all settings, themes, and plugins.

Using the Undo Plugins

There are several WordPress plugins that allow you to undo changes more easily. WPReset is one example that allows you to reset your WordPress site to the previous configuration without affecting the content. The steps to use the WP Reset are given below.

Steps To Undo Changes in WordPress using the Undo Plugins

Step 1: Istall and activate the WP Reset plugin

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Go to the Dashboard and choose "add new" under the Plugins option
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Choose the WP Reset plugin


Step 2: Go to the plugin settings.

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Go to the settings and type "reset"

Step 3: Choose whether to reset specific components or the entire site. After choosing one of the two options click on reset site and the changes will be undone and the site will go back to it's original layout.

Conclusion

Undoing changes in WordPress can be done through several built-in features like post revisions, external plugins for resetting configurations, or restoring from backups. Each approach depends on the level of changes you want to undo whether it's a simple content fix or a full site rollback.


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