Contributors & Revisions

WB Member Wiki tracks every edit made to a wiki page, maintaining a complete revision history and a list of all contributors. This enables transparency, accountability, and the ability to restore previous versions.

Contributor Tracking

Every user who edits a wiki page is added to its list of contributors. The contributor list is stored in the _wbmw_contributors post meta as an array of user IDs.

Viewing Contributors

When enabled in Display Options, the contributor list appears on each wiki page showing:

• Display name of each contributor
• Link to their profile (if using BuddyPress or PeepSo)
• Total number of unique contributors

Contributors are listed in the order they first contributed to the page.

How Contributors Are Tracked

A user is added to the contributor list whenever they:

• Create a new wiki page (they become the first contributor)
• Edit and save an existing wiki page
• The same user is only listed once regardless of how many edits they make

Revision History

Every save creates a WordPress revision, extended with wiki-specific metadata:

• Edit summary - A brief note explaining the change
• Author - The user who made the revision

Viewing Revision History

1. Navigate to any wiki page
2. Click History (available to users with edit permission)
3. The history view shows all revisions in reverse chronological order

Each revision entry displays:

• Date and time of the edit
• Author name
• Edit summary (if provided)
• Links to view the full revision or compare with other revisions

Comparing Revisions (Diff View)

Select two revisions to compare them side by side:

1. From the history view, select two revisions
2. The diff view shows changes highlighted in both the title and content
3. Added text appears in green, removed text in red

The diff uses WordPress’s built-in wp_text_diff() engine for accurate comparison.

Restoring a Previous Version

Administrators and users with edit permission can restore any previous revision:

1. Open the revision history for a page
2. Click Restore next to the desired revision
3. Confirm the restoration
4. The page content reverts to the selected revision
5. A new revision is created recording the restoration

Restoring a revision doesn’t delete any history. The restoration itself becomes a new revision entry.

Edit Summaries

Edit summaries are short descriptions of what changed in each edit. They appear in the revision history and help contributors understand the page’s evolution.

Adding an Edit Summary

When saving changes to an existing page, the editor includes an edit summary field. Enter a brief description before saving.

Good edit summaries:

• “Added section on environmental impact”
• “Corrected founding date from 1923 to 1925”
• “Reorganized subsections for clarity”

Why Edit Summaries Matter

• Help other contributors understand changes without reading the diff
• Create a readable changelog for each page
• Make it easier to find when a specific change was made
• Support collaborative editing by communicating intent

Revision Limits

The plugin respects WordPress’s revision settings. By default, WordPress keeps all revisions. You can limit the number of revisions stored using the WP_POST_REVISIONS constant in wp-config.php:

// Keep the last 20 revisions per page
define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 20 );

The plugin retrieves up to 50 revisions per page in the history view.