Destructive Autosaves Happening on All Drafts

[miqrogroove]

I'm investigating reports of post drafts magically reverting or not being saved at all. This appears to be happening at random, and so far I cannot find the cause. In the meantime, I have discovered a related problem: WordPress 2.9.2 is continuously overwriting drafts during editing.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Create a New Post

2. Click Save Draft (or wait for autosave)

3. Edit the content and wait 60 seconds.

4. Repeat step 3 as many times as you like. Go to other pages. Come back. Do anything other than click Save Draft, and WordPress will repeatedly overwrite the saved information without creating any revisions or autosave records.

This is especially destructive if in step 2 the draft was autosaved by WordPress. In that case, there are no revisions at all. If you clear the content at that point, WordPress essentially deletes your draft without confirmation.

[miqrogroove]

FWIW, the other half of this bug, where posts are magically not being saved at all, is caused by qTranslate.

Currently, the best workaround is to use WordPress 2.8.

[dd32]

AFAIK, This is by design.

Revisions should not be created for every draft autosave.

Revisions are only created of manual/final saves.

[miqrogroove]

Why doesn't the autosave create autosave records now? I can only get it to happen on published posts.

[azaozz]

Autosave follows the same logic like any text editing program. If you start a new document in MS Word, type something then delete it, the autosave there will save the empty document. If you've opened an existing document the autosave will create new document/revision leaving the old one intact until the Save button is clicked.

That's why there is multi-step undo in TinyMCE like most text editors, so if you deleted something by mistake you can press Ctrl-Z (or use the Undo button) to get it back.

Closing this as invalid as part of the problem is caused by a plugin and the other part is expected behaviour not just in WordPress but in many text editors.

[miqrogroove]

If you've opened an existing document the autosave will create new document/revision

No it doesn't. That only happens on published posts.

[azaozz]

Replying to miqrogroove:

(In MS Word) If you've opened an existing document the autosave will create new document/revision

No it doesn't. That only happens on published posts.

Yes, currently "saved" in a text editor = "published" in WordPress. If you're suggesting to add revisions to drafts, I see how this can benefit people that edit a draft over a number of days and might want to check an old version of it. However this is an enhancement (feature request?) and some people would be opposed to having more revisions.

Generally drafts are overwritten and the multi-step undo is in place to correct any mistakes like in most text editors.

[azaozz]

Re-reading this ticked after two years still don't see a point in having multiple autosave revisions for drafts. At best that would be plugin material.