Revisions
MageDrop keeps a history of the CMS pages, CMS blocks, categories and products in your Magento store. Each save creates a revision: a full snapshot of the entity at that moment. You can browse the history of any entity and restore any earlier version with one click.
How revisions work
With the companion module installed and enabled, every CMS page and block save, and every category and product save in the Magento admin, is captured. After each save, the module sends a snapshot of the entity to MageDrop, together with the store view it was saved at.
There's nothing to click and no change to how your team works. Catalog saves made by imports and integrations are deliberately not captured, so bulk syncs don't flood the history.
Initial sync
Revisions are captured from the moment the module is installed. To give your existing CMS pages and blocks a starting point, click Sync from Magento on the store's Revisions page (store owners only). MageDrop takes a fresh snapshot of every CMS page and block, labelled as an import in the timeline. You can run it as often as you like, for example after pages were created while the module was disabled.
Categories and products don't need a sync: each one is captured the first time it's saved.
What a revision contains
- Every field the entity type supports. For products that includes the gallery, options, tier prices, links and assignments as structured data; images are recorded as paths.
- Store view: the scope the save was made at.
- Admin user: the Magento admin who saved it.
- Time: exactly when the save happened.
- Source: an admin save, a MageDrop deploy, an import, or a snapshot taken before a restore.
Browsing revisions
- Open your store in the MageDrop dashboard.
- Go to Revisions.
- You'll see every entity that has revisions, most recently changed first. Filter by type to see only categories or products, for example.
Each entity shows its title and type, its Magento ID, how many revisions it has and when the latest was captured.
An entity's history
Click an entity to see its timeline. Each revision shows where it came from, when it was saved, who saved it, and which fields changed compared with the revision before.
Comparing versions
Click View changes on a revision to see its full snapshot. Fields that changed since the previous revision are marked; click a field to see the old and new values side by side.
Restoring a revision
You can put any entity back to an earlier revision. MageDrop pushes that revision's content fields back to Magento through the module, at the store view the revision was captured at.
- Open the entity's history.
- Find the version you want.
- Click Restore in the timeline, or Restore this version on the revision's page.
- Confirm.
What happens during a restore
- The current state is captured first. MageDrop snapshots the entity as it is now, as a new revision, so the restore itself can be undone.
- The revision is pushed. Only the content fields that differ from the live entity are applied, through the module, at the revision's store view.
- It's logged in the store's activity log.
The live store is updated immediately.
Undoing a restore
Because MageDrop captures the current state before every restore, you can always undo one: restore the snapshot that was taken just before it, shown in the timeline as a restore snapshot.
Deleted CMS pages and blocks
If a CMS page or block has been deleted in Magento, its revision page offers Recreate in Magento instead, which creates it again from that revision.
Revisions vs. release rollback
MageDrop has two ways of going back, for different jobs:
| Release rollback | Revision restore | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Every entity in a release | A single entity |
| Goes back to | The state just before the deploy | Any earlier revision |
| Started from | The release page | The entity's revision history |
| Use it to | Undo a whole release | Put one page, block, category or product back to an earlier version |
| Can be scheduled | Yes (Roll back at) | No (by hand only) |
Use release rollback to undo a coordinated set of changes. Use a revision restore to put a single entity back to a point in time, for example after someone's accidental edit.
Where revisions are stored
Revisions are stored by MageDrop, not in your Magento database. That means:
- No extra tables or bloat in your Magento store.
- Revisions stay available in the dashboard whatever happens to your Magento database.
- Saving in the admin is not slowed down beyond a single API call to MageDrop, and a failure there never blocks the save.
Best practices
- Revisions are automatic. Once the module is installed, saves are captured; you don't need to do anything.
- Use revisions for single-entity recovery. If someone broke a page, find the last good revision and restore it.
- Use release rollback for coordinated changes, rather than restoring entities one by one.
- Check before you restore. Open View changes to confirm it's the version you want.