Your Guide to Enabling Content Versioning in Joomla

You just modified an article on your Joomla website and later found out that you’ve unintentionally modified the entire page. This is not an uncommon scenario. Many Joomla admins and content mods deal with these type of situations quite regularly. The solution? To use Joomla Content Versioning.

It is a really useful tool for content creators and moderators. With Content Versioning, you can track the iterations to the existing content. So every time you make changes and click the Save button, the tools records that change. You can hark back to these iterations, compare them, and take necessary actions.

In this article, learn how to enable Content Versioning in Joomla.

Step-by-Step Process

Here are the steps involved in enabling the Content Versioning:

• Login to your Joomla dashboard
• Go to System>> Global Configuration present on the left sidebar

• Select Articles tab

• You can find the content version under the Editing Layout section from the top ribbon
• A drop-down will appear which will have a few options including Enable Version. You need to toggle in to Yes.
• Under this, you’ll find the Maximum Versions option. You can set it to any number, and Joomla will store that number of versions

Save the changes and exit. This will activate Content Versioning on your Joomla website.

Using Joomla Content Versioning

You may also want to know how to use Content Versioning. Here are a few tips.

• Saving Content Versions

Saving content versions in easy. All you need to do is make some changes and hit the “Save” button. It will automatically create a different version of the article. So you can revert back to the previous version if required.

• Viewing Content Versions

To view the versions of a content, look at the top menu ribbon and locate “Versions”. By clicking on it, you’ll get to see a list of versions available.

• Tracking Content Versions

You can track the changes made to an article. Select the checking correlating to the content versions that you need to compare. Then tap on the “Compare” button. It will open up a window showing you the versions side by side. The changes will be highlighted in Red and Green -- red being the deleted content and green being the added content.

• Restoring Content Versions

You can restore a previous version of the content. Do this by selecting the version and then clicking on the Restore Button located on the upper ribbon.

• Deleting Content Versions

You can delete a version that you don’t want by selecting the checkbox of the version that you want to delete and then clicking on the “Delete” button. Please note that by doing so, you’ll lose that version forever. In other words, it’s an irreversible action. So think before you act.

If you want to keep the version forever, do so by toggling the Keep Forever button that correlates to that version to “Yes”.

So that’s how you enable Content Versioning and use it.

The tutorial was specifically for Joomla 3. So the steps for other versions of Joomla may differ slightly.

In case of further assistance, contact the support team.