Managing content revisions
GovCMS creates a new revision every time a content page is updated. This allows you to track how the content has changed over time on your site.
To view and manage revisions, use the Revisions tab. To access this, navigate to the Content page, then click on a piece of content. Then click on the Revisions button (highlighted in the screenshot below):
Image of Revisions menu item
From the Revisions tab, you can view the individual revisions, revert to an earlier revision, and delete revisions.
Information about each revision of the content is displayed, including :
- 1.Date and time of the revision.
- 2.Who updated the content (creating the revision).
- 3.The revision log message, if entered and the status of the revision at the time it was created (in brackets).
- 4.Radio buttons used to select revisions to Compare (see below).
- 5.Operations dropdown, which allows a user to Revert the content to the selected revision, or Delete the selected revision.
- 6.The Compare selected revisions button (see below for information on this feature).
These items are highlighted and numbered in the following screenshot:
Image of Revision information
Note: Depending on your website configuration, not every user role can access the Revisions tab.
There are two main ways to view the differences between revisions.
Firstly, clicking on the date and time link of a given revision will take you to that revision or version of the file (see 1. in the screenshot above).
Secondly, to see the differences between two different revisions select the radio buttons in the rows of the revisions you wish to compare, then click on the Compare selected revisions button.
Image of compare revisions with radio buttons
The screenshot below shows what was changed between the versions, namely:
- 1.Renaming the page.
- 2.Addition of a Featured image and a Thumbnail image.
It also shows which revisions of the page are being compared (3.)
Image of Revisions what has changed
GovCMS also creates a new revision when a user reverts to a previous revision.
If you have four revision versions (eg, 1, 2, 3 and current, when you revert to #2, then a copy of #2 is made and the copy is set as the current revision.
After the reversion, there are five versions/revisions (1, 2, 3, 4 and current), where current is a clone of #2.
Another useful feature of the revision system is the Revision log message field, which appears near the Create a new revision checkbox at the top right of the content editing form.
Image highlight Revision log message
If a message is added to this field when creating a revision, the message will appear on the Revisions tab along with the revision.
While the Revision log message is an optional field, it is recommended to add a meaningful message whenever a revision is created. This is so that others (or you, months later) can see why the content was changedand what the changes were, without having to actually view previous revisions.