Can I Edit WordPress Posts AFTER Publishing? (Solved)

Using WordPress as a platform for your online blog, shop, community, portfolio, or any other number of reasons is always a great one – especially if you are starting with little to no programming experience.

Not just anyone can pay someone to build them a website – that’s where WordPress comes in!

You can use this amazing site for years (and for free!) while posting whatever you like about yourself, your art, your work, or to sell things you’ve made!

Can you edit a WordPress post after publishing it?

WordPress posts can always be revisited after you publish them. If you have to make edits, thought about something to add, or want to spice up posts from years and years ago, you can do that. No matter what, you can always revisit your posts if you have administrator access to them.

Modifying, editing, and reposting your old content is always a good idea in order to fix any mistakes, fact-check, or to revisit old material with a new gaze.

How Do you Edit a WordPress Blog post after Publishing?

If you’d like to edit a WordPress blog post after publishing it, it’s as easy as finding the post in your article history and clicking on it.

Once in the editor, you can make changes and publish those changes at any time. Simply make your changes and click “update.”

Once updated, you can click “preview changes” to see how the new article looks.

If you don’t like the new article changes, go back and change them again. You can do this, however much you want!

Can You Always Come Back to Old blog Posts and Edit Them?

You can always return to your old blog posts as long as they are still published to WordPress.

You also need to make sure that you still have the administrative permissions to edit blog posts – which you should have if you own and operate the WordPress.

If you accidentally deleted or lost a post, you won’t be able to update it again.

However, if you’re looking to edit an old article that is still on your site, you can always click on it at any time and make whatever changes you want.

Can You Lock a WordPress Post so it Cannot Be Edited?

Some WordPress bloggers worry that their work may be altered or removed over time as their website grows. After a few years of WordPress blogging success, it can be hard to keep an eye on all your old content.

There isn’t a natural WordPress function already installed that allows you to lock down your posts so that they don’t become altered or removed.

However, there are warnings before deleting content and the ability to make editing content only available to the administrator for the whole site.

Possible Plugin

If you are worried that you may accidentally edit something or delete a post, you can actually implement a “Post Lockdown” on WordPress.

A “Post Lockdown” is a plugin you can install on WordPress by Andy Palmer that allows you to “lock” your post.

This means that neither you nor someone on your team can edit, delete, or publish a post without your say-so. You can lock and unlock your post-at-will or remove the plugin as well.

While this is not an official WordPress feature and is instead a created plugin to adapt to the WordPress site, it is a possible option for “locking” your posts from being tampered with or accidentally removed.

There are hundreds of plugins available for WordPress, but this one is specific to preventing edits to a published post.

Is There Anything You Cannot Change after Publishing?

After publishing a post, article, or other pages on your WordPress blog, you may be ready to put away your keyboard and let the views roll on in.

However, if you decide later that you want to make even the slightest – or biggest – changes to the post, that is totally possible.

There is nothing you can’t change after a post is published. If you want to edit an expired link, a photo, a paragraph, or even the whole thing, that’s totally possible!

Why Can’t I Edit my WordPress Post?

If you are having difficulty editing a WordPress post on your site, you may be struggling with an internal software issue.

While it is always advisable to visit WordPress Support pages (see reference link below) for help on your site, one of the more common problems with editing your post is a simple one:

Permissions and Roles

If you are struggling to edit your post, you may want to re-check your login permissions.

You may not be logged in as an administrator, and could perhaps be logging in as a subscriber or contributor.

If you are logged in with the incorrect role, you won’t have the same permissions you usually do as an owner of the site.

If this is the case, you should log out and make sure to log in with the correct information. As an administrator, you have control over all posts, roles, contributors, and published content on the site.

What Should I Check Before I hit Publish?

Even though you can edit a post on WordPress as many times as you want, that doesn’t mean you should.

Writing for blogs is a delicate balance between research and creativity that requires a keen eye and a grasp on the written word.

Before you ever publish your blog post, you need to check out a few things:

• Grammar and Punctuation
• Facts and Information
• Formatting
• Photos and Media
• Plagiarism
• SEO Marketability

Grammar & Punctuation

When writing a blog post, you are signaling to the world that you are a writer – whether that be about finance, travel, literature, art, or even software and development.

This also means that you should be able to produce clean, well-written works every single time. Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but you can also prevent a mistake from happening with a little proofreading and pre-published edits.

Some site owners will hire editors or proofreaders for their blog posts before any of them are sent out into the world. If you’re not the type to do many edits, try inviting an editor onto your team!

Fact-Checking & Information Edits

If you write informational articles, you probably post a lot of facts you find in your research.

It’s great to learn about a lot of new things all at once and can help you grow in your career to do that extensive research as you write.

However, facts are a very important part of getting information on your topic out on your blog. If your facts are incorrect, outdated, or miswritten, your readers could lose their trust in your credibility.

So, make sure that you are fully checking your facts before posting, and even afterward try to update facts based on current events standards and numbers.

Formatting

Formatting is a preference thing and can really shape the style and atmosphere of your blog!

If you prefer something more creative than wordy, you may add a lot of photos to your blog posts. If you are an informational blog, you may adopt a more professional, cut-and-dry style to your posts.

Keeping a consistent style will reward your blog and your readers in the long run if they are long-time viewers of your posts. Make sure to keep that formatting going every single time you post – unless the article is much different from your usual topics.

Photos & Media

Photos and media help break up long, lengthy blocks of texts on a WordPress post.

These photos should be appropriate and relevant to your audience and content.

If you do decide to post media or photos to your blog, make sure that they are either yours or free photos from media sharing sites.

Furthermore, make sure that they fit the style of your blog as well, and maintain that consistency that customers love.

Plagiarism

Any time you or one of your writers copy-pastes something from the internet and markets it as your own is an act of Plagiarism and is the thing that will kill a blog stone dead.

Google and other major search engines are aware of plagiarism, and usually will send blog posts to the bottom of the barrel for doing it. This means that you will not only be hidden from the view of every online search engine user, but you will also lose credibility with fans or readers should they find out.

You can use sites like Grammarly to check for plagiarism before letting your blog post loose into the internet, or hire someone to fact-check and scan the post for plagiarism before they’re published.

When in doubt, don’t do it!

SEO Marketability

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important to your blog post and your site as a whole.

SEO keywords are researched terms and phrases that are buzzing in your target audience’s searches and community. Including these SEO terms, phrases, topics, and discussions will ensure that you stand out among the millions of other Google results online.

This will boost your view count and will help your blog get put on the map in your field of discussion!

Can You Update the Date on a Post when Updating It?

Once you have gone through the trouble to update your WordPress blog posts, you will probably want to let readers know that this post is up to date.

Rather than writing that “This post was last modified on…” at the top of each article you update, you can implement coding into your article that allows that date to be displayed.

Otherwise, no, there isn’t a way to change the “published” date of the article.

That means, even if you edited the article recently, it would still look like it was written three years ago.

Instead, try implementing this code from wpbeginner.com, where they help every new WordPress user with learning their blogs!

As much as we’d like to implement the coding here on our post, it may be easier to review it through their step-by-step guide.

References:

WordPress Roles & Capabilities

WordPress Support