How to Properly Update Live Published Posts in WordPress

Have you ever had to make significant edits to an already published WordPress post? Maybe you are rewriting an old article or you have to update screenshots because they’re outdated. Since we have to do this on a regular basis on WPBeginner and on our documentations for our suite of products, we have created a workflow that works. In this article, we will show you how to properly update live published posts in WordPress.

The Problem with Updating Live Posts in WordPress

WordPress makes it super easy to create and edit posts. You can edit all posts whenever you want, even after publishing them.

However, when editing live posts, you cannot save them until you are done editing. Saving live posts will immediately make your changes visible.

This is a little problematic for various reasons.

If you’re on a multi-author WordPress site someone may need to approve the changes before they go live.

Not to mention, there will be times where you may not be able to finish all changes in one session.

An easy workaround for this issue is to simply copy a post and paste it as a new draft. You can edit the draft and then paste it to the original post.

The problem with this method is that you cannot set or change featured images, Facebook post thumbnail, tags or categories, etc. This means that you or an editor must make those changes on a live post.

Well if you run into any of these problems, then this article is good news for you.

We will show you how to properly update live posts while making it possible to save them and make any changes without affecting the live version.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Video Tutorial

If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.

Properly Updating Live Posts in WordPress

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Revisionize plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After activating the plugin, you need to visit Posts » All Posts in your WordPress admin. This is where WordPress lists all your published posts and drafts.

Take your mouse to the post you want to edit and then click on the Revisionize link. This will create a new revision for your published post by cloning the existing post.

You can edit the post like you would edit any unpublished draft. You can save your changes as many times as you want without affecting the live post.

You can have your supervisor or editor review the changes for their approval. You can also use public post preview to share it with people outside your organization.

Once you are done editing, you can click on the Publish button. The plugin will then replace your live post with the new version.

What happens to the draft?

It is still stored as a revision draft, allowing you to reuse it again to edit the same published post again.

That’s all, we hope this article helped you learn how to properly update live posts in WordPress. You may also want to see these 14 tips for mastering the WordPress visual editor.

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