Putting things back

Fear of breaking it is the reason most websites never improve. So on Spanli, trying something is cheap: every round of changes leaves a saved state behind, and you can go back to one whenever you like.

There is no backup to remember and nothing to set up.

How to go back

Ask for it in the way you would say it out loud:

"Put it back the way it was this morning."

You get a short list of your site's recent states, with when each one was made and roughly what happened. Pick one, and the site returns to it. You can go forward again afterwards.

You can also open that list yourself from your project rather than asking for it, if you would rather browse than describe.

What going back covers

It restores the site: the pages, the sections, the words, the layout, the look.

It leaves your other things alone. This is the important part:

• Enquiries people sent you are not touched.
• The items you type into your lists — dishes, services, projects — are not touched.
• Your plan, your domain and the people you invited are not touched.

So restoring a look you preferred from last week does not un-add the three dishes you entered yesterday, and it cannot lose a message a customer sent you.

What it is not

It works on the whole site rather than on each word. It is built for "that round of changes was worse — put it back", not for un-typing a sentence.

For a small mistake it is almost always faster to say what was wrong and have it fixed. Reach for the history when a whole direction went badly.

It is also a list of your recent states — enough for "yesterday was better", not an archive of every day since you started.

Your visitors never see the experiments

Nothing you try changes the live site. What the public sees stays exactly as it was until you publish, so an afternoon of trying things is invisible to them.

That works the other way too: after you go back to a version you prefer, the live site does not change until you publish it. See Putting your site online.