When a page, file, or theme is created, it creates a version of that content on your site. Then, when that content is updated and republished, it will create another version. These content versions are logged in the system and can be previewed, republished, or deleted at any time. Versions help keep a record of the content on your site and can assist you with keeping track of what edits were made at which time.
You can view and work with the previous versions by going to the page in admin and selecting the History tab. The History tab will list all available versions of the content and any comments made when each version was published.
From the History tab, you can Preview previous versions, view their status, and republish or delete any old versions.
Working with a previous version
- Go to the History tab of the page. Select the version you want to work with from the Name column. You'll see the version you selected at the top of the page and whether it is Deactivated or Published.
- See page version controls at the bottom of the page:
- Delete version
- Copy to WIP
- Roll Back
- Preview
- For page deletion, select Delete version. This will, in turn, delete the page version from your site admin and cannot be reinstated.
- To republish a version, you need to select Copy to WIP. This will copy the previous version's content to a new WIP version. From here, you can make any edits, Preview, and Publish it.
- Please note that you can not use the Copy to WIP feature if there is already a WIP version available.
- There is no way to recover a deleted version of the content.
- If you delete the most recent page version, the page will change to the next version in line; if you delete version 10, version 9 will be the version shown in the admin. If version 9 is still active/published before you delete version 10, the live page will change to version 9, which is published.
- Similarly, if you're doing general clean-up and deleting old versions which will no longer be used, once a version has been deleted, the admin will go back to the most recent version.
- We recommend regular clean-up of content. While we generally recommend archiving old content, particularly content that is at least five years old, if you are unable to archive a page, you can still delete old versions.
- Having too many page versions can slow down the performance of your site. Generally, 100 versions and over will have a detrimental effect on site performance. If you find your content authors regularly go over this limit, we recommend exploring other features in the product to achieve your aims.
- If you delete the most recent page version and all other page versions are deactivated, the page will be deactivated and won't show as a published live page on your site.
- Deleting a page version will remove it from the history tab. If you have ten versions and delete 1-5, the history tab will show 6-10. Remember, we are unable to recover any deleted content.