Is it possible to publish multiple versions of a single post?

Question

I'm assessing WordPress for a short story blog. The blog is to chart my journey as a writer. To this end, I'm looking to post a short story and then, perhaps months/years later, post a revision that (hopefully) will be better. When a reader views a short story post, they should see the latest version but then also have access to previous published versions.

Having done some searching, I have become aware of revisions. From what I understand, these are created via clicking 'Save as Draft' or Publishing. I've seen this question: How can we publish revisions of a post, in addition to showing the latest post?

I have two considerations:

1. It seems if I 'Save as Draft' too many times, I could push out previously Published versions?
2. Is there a way to identify just Published versions and show them only?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I would not recommend the Save as Draft approach as I don't believe it will help you accomplish your ultimate goal. WordPress is saving revisions in a non-public Post Type (more info here).

I found a "Changelog" plugin, which may help track changes to existing blog posts. You can see that here https://wordpress.org/plugins/awesome-changelog/.

Finally, a stock WordPress approach may be the following:

Publish a blog post and create a unique tag. For example, if your blog post is called "Hello World," then name the tag hello_world_revisions. Then, when you are ready to revise the post, create a new post, and call it "Hello World." Tag it with the same hello_world_revisions tag, and that way, all of your revised blog posts are tagged the same, and you can direct your users to that tag when you want them to explore older versions.

There are also other ways to accomplish your goals, but they would require custom code and custom theming. The items noted above are a quick, non-programming way to get started.