How do drafts and revisions work?
Craft CMS has two separate but related features for managing versions of your content- drafts and revisions. Understanding the difference between the two will help you work with confidence and avoid accidentally overwriting or losing content.
Drafts
A draft is a working copy of an entry that you can edit and save without affecting what is currently live on the site. Drafts are useful when you want to prepare changes in advance, work on content over multiple sessions, or get something ready for review before it is published.
To create a draft, open any entry and select Create a draft from the Save button dropdown. You can then make your changes and save the draft as many times as you need. The live version of the entry remains unchanged until you choose to publish the draft.
When you are ready to make a draft live, open it and select Apply draft or Publish from the Save button options. This replaces the live version of the entry with the contents of your draft.
Multiple drafts can exist for a single entry at the same time, and different team members can each have their own draft of the same entry.
Provisional drafts
When you start editing an entry without explicitly creating a named draft, Craft automatically saves your in-progress changes as a provisional draft. This acts as a safety net- if you close your browser or navigate away, your unsaved changes will still be there when you return to the entry. A provisional draft is not visible to other users and is discarded once you publish or discard it yourself.
Revisions
Every time an entry is published, Craft automatically saves a revision- a read-only snapshot of what the entry looked like at that moment. Revisions are not drafts; you cannot edit them directly. They exist purely as a historical record of your content over time.
To view an entry's revision history, open the entry and look for the Revisions option in the settings panel on the right-hand side. This shows a list of previous versions with timestamps and the user who published each one.
Restoring a previous revision
If you need to revert an entry to an earlier version, you can do so by selecting a revision from the history and creating a draft from it. Review the content to confirm it is correct, then publish the draft to make that version live again.
A common mistake to be aware of
If multiple drafts exist for an entry, it is possible to accidentally publish an older draft that does not contain your most recent changes. Before publishing, always check which draft you are working on and confirm it contains the correct content.
Drafts
A draft is a working copy of an entry that you can edit and save without affecting what is currently live on the site. Drafts are useful when you want to prepare changes in advance, work on content over multiple sessions, or get something ready for review before it is published.
To create a draft, open any entry and select Create a draft from the Save button dropdown. You can then make your changes and save the draft as many times as you need. The live version of the entry remains unchanged until you choose to publish the draft.
When you are ready to make a draft live, open it and select Apply draft or Publish from the Save button options. This replaces the live version of the entry with the contents of your draft.
Multiple drafts can exist for a single entry at the same time, and different team members can each have their own draft of the same entry.
Provisional drafts
When you start editing an entry without explicitly creating a named draft, Craft automatically saves your in-progress changes as a provisional draft. This acts as a safety net- if you close your browser or navigate away, your unsaved changes will still be there when you return to the entry. A provisional draft is not visible to other users and is discarded once you publish or discard it yourself.
Revisions
Every time an entry is published, Craft automatically saves a revision- a read-only snapshot of what the entry looked like at that moment. Revisions are not drafts; you cannot edit them directly. They exist purely as a historical record of your content over time.
To view an entry's revision history, open the entry and look for the Revisions option in the settings panel on the right-hand side. This shows a list of previous versions with timestamps and the user who published each one.
Restoring a previous revision
If you need to revert an entry to an earlier version, you can do so by selecting a revision from the history and creating a draft from it. Review the content to confirm it is correct, then publish the draft to make that version live again.
A common mistake to be aware of
If multiple drafts exist for an entry, it is possible to accidentally publish an older draft that does not contain your most recent changes. Before publishing, always check which draft you are working on and confirm it contains the correct content.