How to Restore Your Posts on WordPress Website
If you’re reading this, I assume you’re either a WordPress user or someone who knows one; if not, then perhaps it’s time to consider switching. Why? Well, according to WordPress, as of April 2019, there are over 1.7 million installations of the platform across the world, with over 300 million active monthly users. That’s a lot of potential audience. A lot of content being produced. A lot of content being shared. With such huge amounts of content being created and shared every day, it’s paramount to ensure that your content is discoverable. Ensure that your posts stay up for longer.
And what happens when your posts get deleted or expire? Do you lose all that content?
Thankfully, WordPress makes this easy. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how to restore your posts on a WordPress website.
Find The Post That Was Deleted
In order to restore your posts on a WordPress website, you’ll need to know which post was deleted. As a WordPress user, you can quickly and easily find this information within the database. If you’re not sure which post was deleted, then you’ll need to do some research or ask a fellow WordPress user.
To access the database, you’ll need to navigate to Tools & Settings (or similar) and click Database. This will launch the database setup page.
Once on the database page, you’ll see a table named wp_posts. This is where all your posts reside. When you first install WordPress, the table will be empty.
How to Restore a Post on WordPress
If you want to restore a post on WordPress, you’ll need to perform the following steps:
- Locate the ID of the post you want to restore.
- Find the corresponding row in the wp_posts table
- Click Edit next to the row
- Choose Restore from the dropdown menu
- Choose either All text files or HTML files from the dropdown menu
- Click Restore
Once you’ve done that, a message will display that the post has been restored. You can click OK to continue to the next step, or choose View Post to return to the blog editor.
Tips On Making Your Posts More Sustainable
If you’re writing for the web, then your content is there to be read by anyone who comes along. But how long will that content remain accessible?
Imagine if you’d written an informative article about bicycle safety. That information is still valuable today, but as time passes, the number of people who remember what was taught in school decreases. If that content is no longer accessible or useful to students, then what is the point in keeping that content online?
For that reason, instead of just creating content and letting it reside on a WordPress website, you can take additional steps to make it more sustainable. These tips will help you ensure that your content continues to be useful and available for future generations to come:
Focus On User Experience Over Technical Optimization
When you write an article for the web, you are writing for humans. Humans with different skillsets, experiences, platform preferences, and so on. For that reason, you must always put the user in mind when creating any content for the web. If you want your content to live on beyond its original publication date, then you’ll need to optimize it for the most popular devices and browsers. However, too much technical optimization can actually detract from the user experience. For example, if you’re writing for the web, but your publication format is designed for desktop computers, then your readers will have a poor experience reading your content on a mobile device.
Avoid Short-Lived Trends
What happens when you follow the latest trendy topic and create content around it? That content may be interesting to your audience at the time, but in a month or two, the information you provide may be outdated or even totally inaccurate. Don’t get us wrong, we love a trendy topic as much as the next person, but you must understand the risks and put your audience first. If you want your content to live on beyond its original publication date, then don’t write about a topic that is quickly becoming irrelevant.
Create Longer-Lived Content
If you’re creating content for the web, then that content is there to be read by humans. But what happens when humans begin reading your content and discover that it’s not all that interesting?
For example, let’s say you’ve written an informative article about the best smartphones under $100. If you then decide to write another piece about the best cameras or the best gaming laptops, your previous piece will become outdated very quickly. Instead of writing new content every few months, write a longer-lived piece about something you’re very knowledgeable about. Something that will still be valuable in a few years’ time. In the meantime, your previous content will still be available to readers and can be curated into a handy reference guide.
Make Backups Of Your Content
Technology has helped us create numerous platforms for storing information, and we as digital natives expect technology to help us save and access our content whenever we want. In case something happens to your website or your content and you want to restore it, then make sure you have a backup in place. You can use a range of services, such as Google Takeout, to make backups of your content. If you’ve gone the extra mile and made backups of each of your blog posts, then you can restore any of them (assuming you know the post ID). In the event that you do lose some content, you’ll be thankful that you had a backup to fall back on.
Regular Backups Of Your Content
Keeping backups of your content is vital, but so is making regular backups. Using a service such as Backups Plus to make regular backups of your content to an external server is the simplest and most convenient way to ensure your content is always accessible. And what’s the best way to ensure your content is always accessible? Regularly backing up your content, of course! Regular backups will not only help you restore your content in case of disasters, but they’ll also speed up the process of publishing new content.
Avoid Getting Too Comfortable
If you want your content to live on beyond its original publication date, then avoid getting too comfortable with the idea of just letting it be there. The internet is a wonderful thing, but it can be an unreliable thing. Even more so when it comes to information and advice. What is the point in having all this information if no one is going to help you when you need it?
When you get too comfortable, it’s like playing with a loaded gun. You know the expression, ‘All it takes is one bad apple’? Well, it’s the same with information security. Even though you may write an excellent article about security and the likelihood of your data being hacked, if you get too comfortable, then sooner or later, you’re going to write an article that’s terribly flawed. And when that happens, your data will become vulnerable.
Stay Vigilant
Finally, as a blogger, you’ll most likely receive emails from people wanting to share their opinions with you. Even though you might not agree with everything you read in an email, it’s still important to remain vigilant. If you want your content to live on beyond its original publication date, then you’ll need to keep an eye out for any suspicious emails that come your way. If you think that an email might be trying to scam you or otherwise undermine your website, then it’s your duty as a blogger to report it as suspicious activity.
For that matter, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you feel like a scam is imminent, then it’s your duty to draw attention to yourself. Just remember, to any potential scammer, you’re just a target. One who is very easy to trick. So if you find yourself in that situation, you must fight back with all the tools at your disposal. In this case, you’ll need to remain vigilant.