HowTo – Slowing The DAM Autosave Interval In WordPress

Filed under: Wordpress Tips

Have you tried to spell check your posts in WordPress lately?

Yea if you are like me and everyone else trying to deal with inserting images, making selections or even just spell checking got a lot harder after someone cranked up the autosave interval so high that it seems you can’t type more then a paragraph without it fireing off another autosave.

Well there is a way to increase the time between saves.

Open your wp-settings.php file and search for the word “save”

You will find a line of php to edit that looks like this.

/**
* It is possible to define this in wp-config.php
* @since 2.5.0
*/
if ( !defined( ‘AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL’ ) )
define( ‘AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL’, 60 );

What you need to do is increase the 60 to 600 .

The time is suppose to be in seconds but either there are other events that fire off an autosave or this calculation of seconds must be off.

Anyway if you want autosaves to happen more often you might find a lower number is better for you.

The comment in the wp-settings.php file says it is posible to set this in your config file but I have not had luck doing that although it could have been because I had an active post being edited.