Discussion Forum

dethompsOWU

Member

Registered: June 4, 2019

Posts: 5

Warnings to help reduce catastrophes...

In the version of BigTree that we're currently using (v4.2.24), there are NO warnings when doing things like:

1. Publishing a page that has pending changes.
2. Archiving a page.
3. Deleting a page.

We've experienced instances where all three of these have been problematic.

Early on, someone (who was used to the icons used in our previous CMS) clicked the wrong things and managed to archive and then delete an entire section of our website. Luckily, we were able to restore it from backup and there were relatively few changes that had been made elsewhere on the site (so not much else got "lost" when we restored from backup).

Today, we had someone edit and publish a page without realizing that the page already had been edited and not published by someone else. So, placeholder text and images and whatnot that were in there as part of that ongoing page-editing process showed up on the public site.

It stands to reason that there should be some sort of warning at least to help reduce the chances of any of these things happening:

1. "Warning. You are about to publish this page that already has pending changes. Are you sure you want to do that?"
2. "Warning. You are about to archive this page (and any subpages of this page). Are you sure you want to do that?"
3. "Warning. You are about to delete this page (and any subpages of this page). Are you sure you want to do that?"

(That sort of thing...I'm not a wordsmith or anything, so the exact wording wouldn't need to be this, of course)

#1 could go even further and provide a way to see what the pending changes are (see my other Feature Request post, made a few minutes ago), but at least providing some sort of "are you sure you want to do that?" warning might make users thing twice before proceeding.

It's entirely possible that some/all of this functionality is in place in a newer version of BigTree than what we're currently running...and that's fine, as we plan to upgrade our BigTree version sooner rather than later.

Anyway, just a thought that I figured I'd share.

Doug Thompson
Manager of Web and Electronic Communications
Ohio Wesleyan University

Last edited by dethompsOWU (December 19, 2019 8:56am)

timbuckingham

Administrator

From: Baltimore, MD

Registered: April 2, 2012

Posts: 978

Re: Warnings to help reduce catastrophes...

Hi Doug!

I'm not sure which version added it, but there is now a confirmation on permanently deleting a page. As archiving is an intermediate step I'm not 100% sold on the need for a confirmation for confirming that, but it's something we may add to BigTree 5. I like the idea of a confirmation when Saving & Publishing a page that a different user has pending changes on -- I'll add that to the feature list for 5.

dethompsOWU

Member

Registered: June 4, 2019

Posts: 5

Re: Warnings to help reduce catastrophes...

Sounds good. Now I just have to get the "powers that be" here to get off their duffs and pull the trigger on paying for whatever server upgrades are needed so we can upgrade BigTree

Thanks!