Site Versioning
User Guide → Site VersioningSite versioning is key for documentation use, and websites may want to keep past versions for archival purposes. MarkBind can help you easily archive your site.
If you wanted to archive your site for the first time, you might use the following command.
$ markbind archive v1 // archive the current site with the name v1 into the folder version/v1
Make whatever changes you want to your site without affecting this saved version. Then, run:
$ markbind serve -v v1 // serve the site as well as the archived version named v1
Your served site will open automatically. By adding version/v1 to the url in your browser (for example from http://127.0.0.1:8080 to http://127.0.0.1:8080/version/v1), you will view the archived version of your site. Intralinks in the versioned site will only lead to the versioned site links.
To deploy your site with your archived site:
$ markbind build -v v1 // generate site with the archived version named v1
$ markbind deploy
You can save which versions to automatically be served/deployed in site.json.
MarkBind allows you to easily save a version of the site you've built to be hosted at the same site with a modified URL using a single CLI command. All intralinks within the archived site will point to the respective archived pages. By default, the archived site is stored in a folder version/<versionName>, but you may specify your own archivePath.
For example, if your site's base URL relative to your domain is my_site, and you archive a version named v1, then by navigating to the URL <domain>/my_site/version/v1/<someFile> you can access the archived version of someFile.
A versions.json file will be created to track the archived sites you have made, and to exclude the archived sites from being re-archived the next time you make a new version. This file is automatically updated every time you archive a version.
Modify versions.json with caution as it may result in unnecessary files being included or necessary files being excluded.
You may safely change the versionName of a version, provided that it is unique in versions.json. If you have specified versions to deploy in site.json, make sure you update the versions property there as well.
The baseUrl is used when setting the intra-site links; if you later change the baseUrl, previously saved versions with the past baseUrl will not be built/deployed even if specified because it would be a broken implementation.
{
"versions": [
{
"versionName": "v1",
"buildVer": "3.1.1",
"archivePath": "version/v1",
"baseUrl": "/previousUrl"
},
{
"versionName": "v2",
"buildVer": "3.1.1",
"archivePath": "version/v2",
"baseUrl": "/markbind"
},
{
"versionName": "v3",
"buildVer": "3.1.1",
"archivePath": "version/v3",
"baseUrl": "/markbind"
}
]
}
Warning: If the folder at <archivePath> already exists, the contents will be overwritten and your previous files may be lost. Only do so if you need to replace all the archived files with the current site files.
(Also note that you cannot save a version with the same name into a different archive path.)
You may not always want to build all your saved versions. To specify the default versions to build, add a versions property in your site.json file.
You may also specify which versions to build when using the build and serve cli commands(more information).