WordPress files in local environment lost after clicking on "backup database"

Hello,

I just responded to your email with some questions to help troubleshoot the issue.

Hi ExpandedFronts,

Many thanks for your response. The link you provided link me back to this post? I have also browse through the revisr support forums but none seem to be related to my issues. I’m so sorry for my ignorance. Could you point me in the right direction?

The emails address you posted is rejecting my emails to you, so I’ll just post my reply here:

– You mentioned that this was on a local environment and the database backup failed. Was this on Windows or Mac?
– When you reverted, what commit did you revert to? Also, did you revert the files and/or database?
– Did you change the site URL through the development URL field?
– Are the files to WordPress missing? Did you have a another branch on the same repo without WordPress installed that you might have switched to?

Sorry about this and thanks for your swift response.

– I’m using MAMP on MAC.
– After I click on the “backup database” in wordpress admin, there is 1 list created in the “commits” I believe and i click on revert.
– Before I install revisr plugin and encounter this issue, I did ignorantly change the site URL but it was fixed by using relocating “define(‘RELOCATE’,true);” in wp-confid.php and I managed to change back the url to the development url in Settings>General.
– Yes all missing in fact only left with wp-content folder is in my local development directory where this is the directory –> wp-content/uploads/revisr-backup. How do I check if I have another branch?

I also saw that there is a .git (hidden) directory created inside [sites folder] 1 level up MAMP document root folder [wordpress]. Like this below:

– .git (hidden file)
– wordpress (this is where the MAMP document root is set. Also the place where my files are missing except [wp-content folder])
– sitefolder1
– sitefolder2
– sitefolder2
– and so on…

Researched abit and I have also did a “git checkout — .” in terminal, but nothing happens? Are these info enough for you to advise me how to troubleshoot?

Hi,

It looks like this was the combination of a few issues:

– You created an initial commit by backing up the database, and the revisr-backups folder was added to the repository
– By clicking “Revert Files” for that commit, you reverted to a point where there were no WordPress files, as you hadn’t yet committed them to the local repository (and as such, Revisr’s “Undo Revert” link wasn’t available to you)
– Since the database backup was your first ‘commit’, there is nothing prior to that to revert to

Unfortunately it looks like the only way to restore your files would be to do a manual restore of the files. The database should still be there and unaffected, but you will need to restore the files manually.

I’m looking into preventing the potential for this issue in a future release, and will also update the documentation to further emphasize the importance of taking verified backups before major operations.

Let me know if you have any questions on this. Thank you.

Hi ExpandedFronts,

Could you advise how do I manually restore the files? Are all of them lost?

If you have a backup of the files elsewhere on your computer or on another server, you should be able to just drop them into to the old WordPress root directory, otherwise, yes, they would be lost.

Revisr did what you asked it to do, which was to revert to that commit. Since you didn’t have any WordPress files added to the repository, or any of the WordPress files added to the .gitignore, when you reverted to that commit you also lost the untracked files (being WordPress).

If you don’t have a backup of the files, the only other thing that may work would be to use a data-recovery software to try to restore those files from your hard drive.

Really appreciate your time to advise on this. I should really start learning GIT..
Thank you.

Thank you for bringing this issue to my attention.

I’ve opened up this issue on GitHub to try to prevent this issue for the next release (and updated the docs for now- a revamp on docs will be out early this week).

Whoops, posted wrong link, issue is here.