If you’re a regular WordPress user, you may already know that it autosaves your blog posts and pages every minute. The content saves as a draft so that you don’t lose it.
No doubt that such a feature ensures that you don’t lose your blog posts if your computer shuts down or you happen to leave the page.
But everything has a positive and negative impact. The autosave feature can also be the cause of excessive server usage.
When having a multi-author website, there can be high server usage, which may lead to the downtime. To avoid such a situation, you can disable WordPress autosave feature.
The best thing is that cPanel is there is help you. Some people prefer to use FTP over cPanel. As you know, the wp-config.php file plays a vital role in a WordPress site; you need to add a code to it.
A Step By Step Process to Disable WordPress Autosave Feature
Now and then, you may in need to edit the wp-config.php file, so you may already have any idea about location it.
The file controls the connection between the site’s data and its database; it also consists of the authentication keys which stores the login credentials.
As mentioned earlier, you can use an FTP server, but this tutorial explains the process using cPanel because that’s what you need now and then.
You should know that after the release of WordPress 3.6, it has started using the Heartbeat API. If you want to reduce the server usage, you should limit or disable it.
But today, you should learn about disabling the autosave feature.
Follow the steps.
Step 1:
As always, you have to log in to your cPanel account, your web hosting company has offered. Search for the file manager icon, which resides under the files’ section.
You may see a different cPanel layout because every web hosting company uses a unique design template. Depending on your company, you have to find the file manager and open it.
I hope you know that all the content of your WordPress website is available in the file manager.
Step 2:
By default, most of the companies display the home directory until you choose to open public_html.
If you don’t see a popup after clicking on the file manager and the home directory opens up, click on the public_html link from the left-hand sidebar.
Step 3:
If you’re hosting only one website, all of the data is available in the public_html, which is also the root directory for your site.
Search for the wp-config.php file and right-click to edit. As usual, you can also click on the Edit link from the main navigation menu of cPanel.
If you run multiple websites on the same server, you have to open the folder of your domain name. Most probably, the WordPress installation resides inside the same folder name as your domain name.
Step 4:
You see a popup to disable encoding. Well, you don’t want to disable anything yet, all you need is to click on the Edit button to see the wp-config.php file.
Step 5:
On a new tab, you can see all the coding lines present in wp-config.php. Now, copy and paste the code shown below.
define('AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 86400);Save the file by clicking on the Save Changes button from the top-right corner. You have successfully disabled WordPress autosave feature by setting its time to 86400 seconds.
Note: From now onwards, you need to click on the Save Draft button in between writing your blog posts to save your content.
The autosave feature is no more available for your website, to save anything, you have to react manually.
I Hope it wasn’t So Hard as People Said
Most of the time, when WordPress users try something new, they fret. I must tell you that you can disable WordPress autosave feature also using the functions.php file.
But as you can see, the wp-config.php file is easy to edit, which requires only a small code snippet to add. If you decide to use the functions.php method, you have to create a function and deregister the autosave script.
Conclusion
We should always try to follow the process, which has less percentage of affecting the website. And you shouldn’t forget to backup your website and its database before editing any file.
I hope you can easily disable WordPress autosave feature using cPanel.
Check out these top 3 WordPress hosting services:
- Click here to get the best wordpress hosting specialized for wordpress.
