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Advice for backups

Advice for backups

At a glance

The community member is concerned about a hypothetical situation where they create a website for a client, give them shared access to the "content mode" editor, and the client then "butchers" the site. The community member is looking for possible options to handle this situation.

The comments suggest that cloning the project in the dashboard is the best option for now, and that versioning will be explored later. The community member also considers cloning to a different account to keep their dashboard clean. Some community members suggest branching as a good solution, but note that Webflow only offers this feature for enterprise customers.

Another suggestion is to use Webflow's view-only builder mode to access published versions of the site and copy content back into the development version. This would not provide full backup or versioning capabilities, but could be a quicker intermediate solution. However, some community members express uncertainty about the complexity of this approach.

Ultimately, the community member decides to simply duplicate the site as a backup, and create a new copy if they make design changes. They also instruct the client to keep copies of any content they post to the site.

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I use the cloud version, but this would apply to either. I'm looking for ideas for this hypothetical situation. (I've started passing off websites and am concerned with this).

Situation:

I create a site for someone
I give them shared access to the "content mode" editor
They butcher the site, publish and want to restart from the initial handoff

Possible options?

I could clone the project in the dashboard
Could I export and somehow sync with the CLI? (Maybe this step would involve setting up the builder locally to sync?)

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28 comments

Cloning is the best option for now

We will explore versioning later

I suppose I could clone to a different account so my dashboard doesn't get totally messed up and then I have an account specifically for backups. Is this a good idea?

Sure, why not. Clone makes them completely transferable.

Ok, thank you.

Branching would fit really well for this case

basically all changes need to happen on a branch until they are merged

Webflow has this feature only for enterprise customers.

SSteve Suderman

I have the same fear right now. In content mode they can't do too much damage. But if they wipe out important content and then publish, it's gone. Would it be difficult to automate backups to Github?

Would it be difficult to automate backups to Github?

Yes

Would it work for you if you had a way to open builder in view-only mode on published version for any of the domains you have and be able to copy things from there back into your current dev version?

Would this account for if a shared user made changes?

Doesn't matter who made changes

Sorry, I don't really understand. Can you try describing it differently?

doesn't matter who made changes, if you had access to the view-only builder link that loads data from published versions, would that be enough to cover your problem? Any published version can be opened in the builder and one can copy things back into the dev version

In this case its not the same as a backup or versioning, its just access to copy.

versions you would have access to is the same as the amount of domains you published to

basically you can get access to whatever is published

but not in a way that would restore your entire build like a backup

This is something we can do fairely quickly

I think I'm understanding a bit better.

Is this correct: Someone screws up the site in the builder, I could navigate to the view-only builder (which is based on the published version), then I could copy items from there back into my broken version?

Is this also correct: Someone screws up the site in the builder AND they publish. I can no longer grab items from the view-only builder to paste into my broken version?

yes

this would be an intermediate solution to reduce the fear

also if you have multiple domains you can publish to staging first then to prod

and hopefully there is at least one functional version should something bad happen

I am not sure this solution is not too confusing to even make it happen

SSteve Suderman

For now I've just duplicated the site to keep as a backup. I'll create a new copy if I make design changes. Otherwise I've just told the client he needs to keep copies of any content he posts to the site.

That's what I did previously as well (cloned as a backup).

Personally, I'm ok with this solution until versioning comes out. It's simple enough and the Webstudio team doesn't need to shift gears onto the view-only idea.

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