Page version history gone

Question

I have a EPiServer CMS 6 R2 website where several pages appear to have lost all previous page versions. Only the current version remains. This has affected about twenty pages, on a website with several hundred.

The web editors cannot remember if they have worked with any of the affected pages. If they have, it has only been minor spelling fixes and moving pages in the page tree.

We have Google Analytics on the website and can confirm that pages have existed for over a year, as the web editors remember.

I have checked all scheduled jobs, but almost none are active and those active have nothing to do with page version history.

I am at lost for what might have caused this, do any of you have any ideas?

Answer 1

1) Take a look at uiMaxVersions parameter in episerver.config file, under /sites/site/siteSettings node.

According to the docs:

uiMaxVersions

The maximum number of page versions that EPiServer will retain. Set to 0 for unlimited number of versions.

When you change this parameter, nothing happen at first.

But as soon as you publish a page, EPiServer uses this parameter to restrict number of page versions to keep, and removes all older versions. So one of possible cases - parameter was changed some time ago, and pages

2) Take a look at tblChangeLog table. It contains a lot of logging information - who when with which page did what. That will require direct SQL querying, but might help you find the cause.