Activity, versions and restoring

The History page holds two things: an activity feed of who changed what, and version snapshots of a manual that you can open, compare and restore. Everything is recorded on every plan. Your plan decides how far back the page lets you look.

WhereDashboard, History

The two panels

If your brand has more than one manual, pick one in the Manual box at the top of the page and press Show. The activity feed always covers every manual in the brand.

Who may look and who may restore

Opening the page needs View the brand manual, which all four built-in roles have, viewers included. Saving a version and restoring one need Edit sections and content. Without it the Save version bar and the Restore buttons are not shown. See Roles and Custom roles.

What the activity feed records

An API token (opens in a new tab) created or revoked, and a block copied from one manual into another, appear under All only.

A settings change writes one entry naming every field that moved, with the value before and after: Title, Layout template, Visibility, Web address, Path, Search engine indexing, Review before publishing, Available until, Color mode, Spacing density, Accent color, Header image, Section navigation, Section numbers, Stylehub footer, Footer note, Heading font, Body font, Page title, Meta description, Favicon and Social preview image.

What the feed leaves out

• Wording. Typing into a paragraph writes no entry. Use version snapshots and the comparison to see text changes.
• Reading. Opening a manual or a file is not an event. For what visitors did on the public page, see What visitors did.
• Comments. They live under the section they are on. See Comments.

Narrowing the feed

A counter under the controls says how many events match. Times use the format set in Your account.

Where version snapshots come from

A snapshot stores the manual title, the layout template, and every section with its title, position, content and whether it is in the manual. Four things create one.

Snapshots taken automatically are marked Automatic in the list. Each row says when it was taken, how many sections it holds and who saved it.

Open on a version row opens that snapshot in a new tab, drawn the way a reader would see it. Sections that were not in the manual at the time are shown too. Pictures whose files have been deleted since appear blank.

Comparing two versions

Compare picks the older side, always a stored version. With picks the newer side: another version, or The manual as it is now. Compare with now on any version row does the same in one click. The result appears under What changed, as counts and then a row per section.

Inside a changed section you see each field, with the old value struck through and the new one beside it. A field that was never set reads as not set, an empty one as empty, and long text is cut short. Up to twelve changes are listed per section, then a line saying how many more there were. The manual title and the layout template are compared as well, above the sections under The manual itself.

Restoring a whole version

1. Open History (opens in a new tab) and, if the brand has more than one manual, pick the manual and press Show.
2. Find the version. Open confirms it is the right one, and Compare with now says what would change.
3. Press Restore. The confirmation names the version and the moment it was taken, and reminds you that sections added since are removed together with their comments.
4. Confirm.

What the restore does:

• Stores a snapshot of the manual as it stands now, labeled Before restoring "that version".
• Sections in both take their content, title, position and published state from the snapshot, and keep their comments.
• Sections only in the snapshot are created again.
• Sections only in the manual are deleted, and the comments on them are deleted with them.
• The manual takes back its title, and its layout template only when your current plan covers that template. A snapshot taken on a paid plan will not put a paid template back after a downgrade.

Restoring one section instead

In the What changed panel, a section marked Changed or Removed has its own Restore this section button. It puts that one section back from the older version and leaves the rest of the manual alone. A section that no longer exists is added again at the end. An undo point is taken first, unless the section is already identical, in which case nothing is written.

What a restore does not touch

• Settings. Visibility, the password, the web address and path, search engine indexing, the end date, the review switch and every SEO field stay as they are.
• Design. Accent color, color mode, spacing density, fonts, header image, footer note and theme. See Design controls.
• Whether it is published. A restore never publishes or unpublishes anything.
• Files. Restoring does not bring a deleted file back, and the asset library, its folders and its trash are untouched. See The trash, storage and the quota.
• The team, the domain and analytics. None of them are part of a snapshot.

How long it is kept

Activity entries and version snapshots are kept for 370 days on every plan, including Free. After that they are deleted permanently. The one exception is the version a public page is pointed at while a manual is reviewed before publishing: that one is kept however old it is.

Deleting a manual deletes its versions with it. Activity entries belong to the brand and are kept until the retention window runs out.

How far back each plan may look

On Free the page shows a summary instead: how many events are already recorded, that they are kept for 370 days, and what Pro and Business would show.

On a paid plan, a bar on the page says how many older events are stored but outside your window, with a See plans link to Billing (opens in a new tab). The same window applies to versions: one older than the window is not listed, and opening it says it is outside the history window of your plan.

When there is more than the page can list

The page loads the newest 500 activity entries and the newest 100 versions of the chosen manual. When there is more, each panel says Showing the newest with both numbers. The filters work on what is loaded, so on a busy brand narrow by manual first, then by person.

Where to go next

• Review before publishing, for how changes reach the public page.
• Comments, for what a restore keeps and what it removes.
• What a downgrade freezes, for why a manual may refuse a restore.
• Plans and limits, for the history window beside every other number.
• What visitors did, for what readers of the published page were doing.