Lost All content From A cornerstone page - how to recover?

[tjw101]

Hi,

I spent 15+ hours building a long marketing page with cornerstone. Saved the document (and multiple times previously this was saved too). Left the computer overnight with the builder page open in a browser. Came back the next day, hit the refresh button on the browser. Whole page GONE!

How is this even possible? Why is this even possible?

And now I’m reading that you don’t use any sort of versions or autosaves with Cornerstone (while most of your competitors do?) and that this functionality has been on the request list from a lot of of users for a very long time and still not present?

How do I get my content back? (currently having to roll back to a previous backup of the whole website - sort of crazy I have to do this, means I lose other recent site changes in the process).

btw. the new interface has been far less user friendly than the classic interface. Looking forward to seeing that improved.

Thanks
Tom

[christopher]

Hi there,

We are sorry for the experience you had. This might be caused by several reasons which can vary from 3rd party plugin conflicts to services like CloudFlare which minify the assets of the Cornerstone.

The new version of the Cornerstone supports the revision functionality of the WordPress and if you already saved several times you can use that functionality to get back to the previous mode:

https://codex.wordpress.org/Revisions

Also, there is a Templating system in Cornerstone which you can use in the future to save up stuff as templates both for backup or reuse of the page:

Thank you for your feedback regarding the GUI of the Cornerstone. The original intent of the UI change was to make it close as possible as to header/footer builder to incorporate the new flexbox functionality.

Thank you.

[tjw101]

Our developer has been over the site and backups of the site to find the data - it doesn’t even seem to exist in older backups of the site - which seems almost impossible? The page currently looks like this https://prnt.sc/h0t3a2

The left column shows the sections still exist - but all the data is missing. We saved and reloaded the page numerous times last week without issue, until Thursday when all the data has gone.

Where would our developers find the missing data inside the site backups? It has to have existed somewhere at some point as we were accessing it.

By “The New Version” of cornerstone, can you confirm an exact version number where this functionality became available please? We have 2.1.2

Thanks
Tom

[christopher]

Hi there,

The revision support was added from version 1.0.6:

https://theme.co/changelog/#cornerstone-1-0-6

The revision functionality of the WordPress should’ve been enabled in the time of the development.

That is a very strange case. Would you please kindly do the usual troubleshooting steps below to make sure there is no conflict going on? (Have a complete backup of the website before doing any action.)

• Please make sure you are using version 5.2.2 of the theme and version 2.1.3 of the Cornerstone plugin. If not kindly update them.

• Deactivate all 3rd party plugins and check the pages.

• Use the template functionality of the Cornerstone to make a template of the page in question and add it to the newly created page.

• Make sure that you have enough PHP memory limit on your hosting service provider. FOr more information:

Increasing the WordPress Memory Limit - WooCommerce Docs

Kindly get back to us with the results of the tests above and also the URL/User/Pass of your website using the Secure Note functionality of the post so that we also take a look at the case and see if we can be of a help.

Thank you.

[tjw101]

Our developer managed to roll the site backup back further and we recovered most of the page. Why it disappeared in the first place is very confusing and concerning. Hoping nothing like this happens again. It’s a huge waste of time.

My previous question was “Where does cornerstone store the page data?” - knowing if the data had been deleted would have been much more useful as a first step than disabling plugins and making templates - which would have no effect if the data was simply gone, which it seemed to be…

So, where is the page data stored? In the database? if so, what table? what search criteria do I need to use to find the correct data? Or is it somewhere else?

[tjw101]

I just lost all my content - Again!!! After editing and saving earlier without issue, I opened to the page again and got an error message:

“Front End Conflict is preventing the page from loading - Do you want to retry?"

(This error message appears over the top of the page - I can clearly see the page still existing underneath the error)

I hit retry and all the data is removed from the page? I’m now staring at a blank page again with all the sections in the left hand column present, but empty.

Please note, never had any issues like this until upgrading to Cornerstone V2.

I closed the page and tried to re-load the editor again, the page data still seems to exist - but the error appears again, and hitting retry blanks the page.

What is going on with this error?

[rad]

Hi there,

It’s stored as post meta, with the name _cornerstone_data. It’s inaccessible unless something in your plugin or custom code modify such data.

It’s also one of the reasons why it’s added through post meta, so it can’t be easily edited or affected by plugins that modify post content.

If you’re still seeing the page in the background (preview) then it means the data is still there. And maybe something is just obstructing the data from being processed or transfer. Please provide your site’s URL that has this issue and admin login credentials in a secure note. I will be more happy to check it

Thanks!

[tjw101]

Our developer believes they found the issue. But if anything like this happens again, we’ll be in touch.

[paul.r]

Glad to know they found the issue. Have a nice day!