Some of our customers have experienced the issue of the dreaded time out or loss of connection. The timeout period set as standard on PhatCMS is two hours. If you have been editing content for a couple of hours or if your connection between the server and your computer is broken, this can result in you pressing the save button, and seeing an error instead of your work being saved.
While we always suggest everything on your website is backed up in Word, it can still be a pain when you need to do a lot of reformatting from the Word document. We are working on a solution that will keep the session alive in the background whilst editing, and provide a warning if the connection has been lost.
In the meantime there is a simple procedure you can follow before saving your work if you are unsure about the time you've spent or if you have been having connection problems:
Steps to save your work:
- In the editor, *before* you save press the Source button on the top left hand side, this will show a whole bunch of text in the edit box.
- Click in the box (anywhere) so your cursor is in the box, then do Ctrl + A to select all, the Ctrl + C to copy (or use the respective buttons for these functions in the editor
- Open Notepad (in Windows XP Start > Programs > Accessories > Notepad)
- Click in Notepad and Ctrl + V to paste.
- File > Save in Notepad, as a text document on your local hard disk (Desktop, My Documents etc.)
- Return to the editor, and click the Source button again to go back to normal view, save your work in the editor
- You now have an exact offline copy if the connection has failed between you and the website
Steps to restore the offline copy
- In the editor, go into the Source view by clicking the source button, and press Ctrl + A on your keyboard to select all, then backspace to remove the old source
- Open Notepad again, and Ctrl + A on your keyboard to select the offline source in Notepad, then Ctrl + C to copy
- Return to the editor and ensure your cursor is in the edit box, then Paste (Ctrl + V)
- Click the Source button again and you will see the formatted content, press Save
- You have now restored your offline content
By following this procedure, you can be sure that whatever was last in the editor will be exactly the same if you happen to lose the connection.
