Version history

Your website is saved as a series of numbered versions. Each one is a complete copy of every page, image and setting as it stood at that moment — not a list of changes, but the whole website. The Versions panel in the builder shows them, and lets you go back to any one of them.

Open it with the clock icon in the builder's left-hand rail.

What you'll see

One card per version, newest at the top. Each card shows a picture of the homepage as it looked then, the version number, when it was last changed, and what it holds — the words you asked Max for, or where the version came from when you made the changes yourself: a starter website, an imported one, or a version you restored earlier.

Two labels tell you what each version is doing right now:

• Current — the version you are editing. Everything you and Max change lands here.
• Live — the version your visitors see on your own domain. It only appears once you have connected a domain and published.

The first time you open the panel, Max takes pictures of the versions that don't have one yet. They appear over the next minute or so; you don't have to wait or reload.

Previewing an earlier version

Select any card and that version opens in the preview beside it. You can move between its pages and switch between desktop, tablet and phone, exactly as you can with your current website.

An earlier version is read only. Editing and the code view are unavailable while you are looking at one, because those tools change the website you are building rather than the one you are looking back at. The bar along the top says which version is on screen and offers the way out.

Restoring a version

With an earlier version open, choose Restore this version.

Restoring does not rewind your website. It makes a copy of the version you chose and puts that copy at the top of your history as the newest version. If you are on version 7 and restore version 3, you end up on a new version 8 that looks like version 3 — and version 7 is still there, one card down, if you decide you preferred it after all.

That means restoring is always safe. Nothing is overwritten, and you can restore your way back and forth as often as you like.

After you confirm, a Restoring version… screen covers the builder while the copy is made. On a website with lots of pictures that can take a minute. It carries on even if you close the tab or reload the page — the builder shows the same screen again until it is done — and when it finishes the builder opens on the restored version and tells you its new number. While it runs the rest of the builder is paused, so nothing you change can land on the version being replaced.

If a restore can't finish — most often because Max or another change was busy with your website at the same moment — the builder says so and leaves the earlier version open, so you can simply choose Restore this version again.

Once it's done:

• Your dev site shows the restored website straight away — that address always shows what you are working on.
• Your live website does not change until you press Publish. If you restored a version in order to put it back in front of visitors, publish it once you are happy.

When a new version is saved

Two things save a version, and between them your history is a record of everything you have asked for:

• Max finishing a change. Each time you send Max a request and it finishes changing your website, that work is saved as its own version — labelled with what you asked for. So "put it back to how it was before I asked for that" is always one card away, whether or not you have ever published.
• Publishing. The version you publish is kept as it was, and the next change starts a new one, so what your visitors are seeing never shifts under them.

Changes you make yourself — in the Files panel, in edit mode, in Content, or by uploading a picture — carry on in the version you are working in rather than starting a new one every time you type. For undoing a single edit to a single file, revision history is the more precise tool.

If Max is interrupted partway through a change, nothing is saved as a finished version: choosing Try again picks up in the same one, so you don't collect a card for every attempt at the same request.

How far back it goes

Max keeps your most recent versions — the panel tells you how many — plus every version you have published, and the one you currently have published however old it is. Older versions are cleaned up automatically to keep your website quick to work with. Keeping the published ones separately is deliberate: a busy week of building with Max can't push "what I had live in August" out of your history.