How To Adjust Your Autosave Timings

Snippets, Tutorials | By Paul Maloney | 17 January 2011 | Comments 8

Have you ever been writing a post on your blog, and your computer has suddenly locked or you lose your internet connection and you have lost all of your article? Most of us have been there and if you haven’t experienced this take my word its upsetting!

WordPress’ default auto save internal is usually 60 seconds, you might want it to save every 30 perhaps?

Here is how you do it, this change takes place in wp-config.php

wp-config.php

define('AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 30);

You set the time in seconds, in this snippet its set to 30 seconds, so 5 minutes would be 300, 10 minutes would be 600 etc…

Now at the other end of the spectrum you might not want your blog to autosave, it could be slowing down your computer or you simply might not want it to autosave.

There are plugins available to disable auto save but I find the best way of combating this is to set a huge time limit on the autosave so it will never effect you.

So what I do is this:

define('AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 604800);

This snippet now tells your blog to auto save the article every WEEK, therefore unless you are the world’s slowest blogger that should not bother you anymore.

Paul Maloney

Paul Maloney is a UK based web designer/developer and runs the design agency Tropica. He particularly enjoys using and working with WordPress and has a keen interest in typography. You can also follow Paul on Twitter.

Visit Paul Maloney's website

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8 Comments

  • January 18, 2011
    Vincent Parker says:

    Hey there, Paul.

    I was at another blog, saw the post to here and simply had to say thank you.

    Today while I was writing a post the power went out and bloop, there went the post.

    60 seconds may not seem like a great deal, but when you’re in the writing groove it can definitely hurt.

    Thanks again for this bit of code. Definitely a big help.

    Vincent Parker

    Reply
    • January 18, 2011
      Paul Maloney says:

      hey Vincent no problem, glad you found a use for this snippet! :)

  • January 19, 2011
    Kjetil says:

    Good tip
    Jeff Chandler also has a good point about the difference between auto saves and revisions here:
    http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2011/01/18/decreasing-wp-auto-save-time/
    Worth being aware of
    Thanks

    Reply
  • January 19, 2011
    Oliver says:

    Useful tip. I know quite a few occasions this would have saved my mood for the day (I know, it’s futile to become mad because you lost, what, one minute in your life, but, I can’t explain why, losing a post is horribly irritating !), so, thank you very much for the info :)

    Reply
  • January 19, 2011
    Paul Maloney says:

    Thanks Oliver and Kjetil glad its of some use to you both :)

    Reply
  • January 21, 2011
    SEOservices says:

    that’s great helpful tip to me
    thank you
    …..

    Reply

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