Let’s imagine that you just started a new food blog and you’re excited to publish your first recipe. You spent a lot of time getting the content just right, taking the perfect images, and loading it into WordPress. The next day, you log in to add one final picture and share your hard work on social media, but the post has disappeared. You can’t find it anywhere!

What happened? Where did it go? Do you have to start from scratch?

There are a variety of reasons you may not be able to find a post. Let’s take a look at the possibilities, along with ways you can recover your content.

How to find a missing WordPress post

Where exactly did your blog post go? Here are a few possibilities:

1. You wrote a page instead of a post

When you create new content on WordPress.com, there are two common options: pages and posts. Each one serves a specific purpose and is created differently.

Pages are static, relatively permanent parts of your website. On a main menu, they’ll typically look something like Home, About, or Contact.

Posts are articles or updates that typically appear in chronological order on your site. You might publish a new post once or twice a week.

Since the process of creating a page and a post is pretty similar, it’s easy to start with the wrong one. To check, open the WordPress.com dashboard and go to My Sites → Pages in the left menu. If you added your post as a page, then you’ll see it in the list of pages that appear.

And don’t worry — you don’t have to start over! You can easily migrate your content from a page to a post. All you have to do is:

1. Open the page and, in the editor, click on the ellipses (…) in the top right corner.
2. Click Copy All Content.
3. Open a new browser tab and create a brand new post.
4. In the new post, click the ellipses again and select Code Editor.
5. Paste the content you copied earlier.
6. Exit the code editor.

And that’s it! Your post is back exactly where it belongs, and you can share with your followers.

2. It’s hiding in drafts

With WordPress, you can save your post as a draft without needing to publish immediately. This is super helpful if you want to add more content or share it with followers at a later time. While you can manually save your post as a draft, WordPress.com also autosaves everything you’ve created about once per minute. 

So, your missing post could very well be in the Drafts folder. To find out, go to Posts → All Posts in the left menu of the WordPress.com dashboard. There, you’ll see several tabs titled “Published”, “Drafts”, “Scheduled”, and “Trashed”. Click the Drafts tab to see a full list of post drafts.

If your post is there, you can go right back to editing and publish whenever you’re ready.

3. It’s been scheduled for publication

The ability to schedule posts is just one of the helpful features available with WordPress. It allows you to finish your post whenever you’d like (after that 2:00 AM jolt of inspiration, perhaps?) but schedule it to publish when your readers are most active.

If you can’t find your post, it may have been scheduled for publication. Simply go to Posts → All Posts in the left menu of the WordPress.com dashboard. This time, click the Scheduled tab to see a list of posts that are set to publish. 

If you find your missing post, simply make any changes necessary and either publish immediately or keep it scheduled for a future date and time.

4. It’s pending review

WordPress.com allows for a variety of roles with different permission levels. So, if you’re an author or editor on someone else’s site, your post may need to be approved before it’s published. Or, if it’s your own site, you may have accidentally checked the box for “pending review.” 

To find your post, go to Post → All Posts in the left menu of the WordPress.com dashboard. Click the Pending tab to see all posts that are pending review. If you want to remove the pending status, simply open the post and uncheck Pending Review in the Status & Visibility section.

5. It’s in the trash

It’s also possible that you accidentally sent your post to the trash bin. But don’t worry — that doesn’t mean that it’s gone forever! WordPress.com saves trashed posts until you choose to permanently delete them.

To find your trashed post, go to Post → All Posts and select the Trashed tab. Hover over the post and click Restore. Now your post is back in action!

6. You may need to search for it

A good final step is to search for your post on your site, just in case it ended up somewhere else. To do this, go to Posts → All Posts and click the Search icon in the top right corner. Type in the name of your post — or a keyword that you used inside the post — and results will auto-load on the page.  

What to do if your post is gone

If you tried all the steps above and still can’t find your post, it’s possible that it’s completely gone. Here are the options you have to move forward:

1. View post revisions 

WordPress.com autosaves and stores revisions on your site as you work. So, if you found the post itself, but it’s blank or missing content, you may be able to restore another version.

Open up the post and select Revisions under Document Settings. There, you’ll see a list of revisions, which you can click on and compare. Once you find the one you’re looking for, select it, then click the Load button. You’ll also need to save or publish the post to keep the changes.

2. Check Google cache

If the post you’re looking for was previously published, it’s possible that Google already indexed it. So, you may be able to view a cached version, even if you accidentally deleted it from your site entirely.

To do this, search for your post by name on Google. If you find it, click the down arrow beside the URL and select Cached. Then, you can copy the content and paste it into a new post on your WordPress site.

3. Try the Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine is an online archive of internet content. And if your post was published, there’s a decent chance it’s available for you to view as part of this archive.

All you have to do is go to The Wayback Machine website and type your post URL in the search bar. Then, you’ll see a calendar showing dates that your post was saved. Choose one, then copy and paste the content into a new post on your WordPress site.

4. Restore a backup

If you have a Business or eCommerce plan with WordPress.com, you have access to automated website backups. You can find your backups in your activity log by going to My Sites → Jetpack → Activity Log.

There, you’ll see a full list of the activity that took place on your site, as well as available restore points. Find the one that contains your post, click the ellipsis (…) next to it, and select Restore to this Point. Do keep in mind, though, that anything you’ve added to your site since the date of that backup will be deleted.

5. Start from scratch

Unfortunately, if all else fails, you might have to rewrite your post from scratch. As you do so, make sure to click the Save Draft button at the top of the WordPress post dashboard. Thankfully, WordPress does autosave your post around once per minute, but saving it yourself will give you total peace of mind. 

There’s no need to panic

If your post seems to have disappeared into thin air, don’t worry! WordPress has a variety of safeguards in place to help you find lost content or recover accidentally deleted posts. Simply follow the steps above, and you’ll most likely find your post ready and waiting to be published.

Looking for more help? WordPress.com users receive stellar support.

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