Joomla Help Screens

Description¶

A Version History popup shows prior versions of the item being edited. It is available for Articles, Banners and Clients, Contacts, News Feeds, User Notes and all Categories.

Each time an item is saved a new version is created automatically. The number of versions to keep for each item is set in the component Options. One or more versions can be marked to keep forever. Such versions will not be deleted automatically even if the maximum number of versions entered in the options is exceeded.

Note: If versioning is used, custom fields are not stored in different versions.

How to Access¶

Select the Versions button in the Toolbar of an item edit page.

Screenshot¶

Column Headers¶

• Checkbox Check this box to select one or more items. To select all items, check the box in the column heading. After boxes are checked, select a toolbar button to take an action on the selected items.
• Date The time and date that the version was saved. Selecting this link opens the Preview of that version in a pop-up window. Note that one of the dates will be followed by a star symbol. This indicates that this is the version that is currently saved and being edited.
• Version Note A Version Note can be used to help identify the nature of the changes from one version to the next. A Version Note entered before saving an item will show in this column.
• Keep Forever This column shows whether the version has been marked to Keep Forever. Normally, each version will be retained according to the settings in the component options page. The default settings are to keep a maximum of 10 prior versions for an item. When an item is saved that already has 10 saved versions, the oldest version is deleted. If a version is marked as Keep Forever it will not be counted as one of the saved versions and will not be deleted when the maximum number is reached.
  • To toggle the Keep Forever state on or off select a No or Yes button or select the version's check box and then select the Keep On/Off button in the toolbar.
• Author The user who saved this version.
• Character Count The total characters saved in this version. Note that this includes the database column names as well as the actual characters typed in.

Toolbar¶

• Restore The current version of the item is marked with a star to the right of the Date. To restore one of the other saved versions, check the check box for the desired version and select the Restore button. The current version of the item will be replaced with the selected version, and the edit screen will reload with the restored version loaded in the editor.
• Preview To preview a version, either select the Date column for the desired version or select the check box and then the Preview button. A separate popup window will load showing the selected version of the item.
• Compare To compare two versions to see what was changed, select the check boxes for each of the versions and then the Compare button. A new browser window will open showing a list of changed fields and the changes made in those fields.
  • The first column is the field name, the second is the older version, the third is the newer version, and the last column highlights the differences between the two versions.
• Keep On/Off This button toggles on or off the Keep Forever feature for a version. Normally, the oldest version of an item will be deleted automatically when the maximum number of versions (set in the Options for the component) has been exceeded. If you set the Keep Forever property for a version, it will never be automatically deleted.
• Delete This button allows manual deletion of one or more versions. Check the check box for the versions to be deleted and then select on the Delete button. Note that this does not delete the item being edited. It only deletes the version history for the item.