Tracking changes

[rmorgan]

Has anyone come up with a process to track changes? I have a page where users can edit content with the built in FCKeditor and submit these changes but the users would like a way to see what the previous changes were. Any ideas and/or best practices would be appreciated. TIA.

[Guest]

How many versions do you want? Is one enough or do you want to save all previous versions?

[rmorgan]

Well, in theory, tracking changes from the previous edit would probably suffice. But who knows with end-users. I am currently storing all changes but only the last edit is presently available and viewable.

[Guest]

I built something that stores article data in a separate table (ex: article_data) from the articles table itself. I increment the version and insert the new data into a new row in the article_data table. I also store the master article ID to relate back to the articles itself. This way I can query for the article history by the master article id, getting each version. Hopefully that doesn't come across as confusing.

[rmorgan]

No, I think I understand. Just need a way to present it so that the users will understand it. It is beginning to appear that in this case, presentation is going to be the tough part. I will look into your suggestion a little further as I have already got this part separated into different tables as it is. The problem I think I am going to encounter with this whole thing is that they will probably end up expecting the tracking to operate like M$ Word. But thanks for your suggestion.