Messed Up My Plone Website - Settings Completely Gone

Question

I messed up my Plone website awfully when trying to install a plugin. I'm not sure what exactly happened but the result was an empty website with no plugins installed; like there were no menus, no actions no whatsoever.

Happily I was able to recover the plugins using "portal_quickinstaller". So the plugins are back, except that none of the settings have been restored. It's like a fresh Plone website with absolutely no content in it --when I browse to the root of the website, all I get is "Welcome to Site". Funny thing is that I can access the contents using URLs while /folder_contents shows only an empty folder.

I am sure there is something in ZMI that can help me recover the settings but, I have no clue what is it and honestly been having my big share of goofing up in ZMI for today; so I'd rather wait for a hint from you folks rather than trial and error.

So the question is "Is there any way to restore the settings of a (bunch of) plugin(s) through ZMI?"

I'd appreciate any help/hint.

PS: Using Plone 4.2.1 on CentOS

Answer 1

Zope features an undo mechanism, you can access it from the ZMI via the Undo tab in the portal root or directly with the http://your.site.url/manage_UndoForm.

The committed transactions are listed chronologically (latest on top), you need to identify the transaction in which you installed the problem addon (usually something like /[portal_id]/prefs_install_products_form).

After you identify the transaction you will need to select it and all the transactions since then. So

[-] Transaction 10
[-] Transaction 9
[-] Transaction 8 <-- broke everything
[-] Transaction 7

will become

[x] Transaction 10
[x] Transaction 9
[x] Transaction 8 <-- broke everything
[-] Transaction 7

If the transaction that broke things is older and doesn't fit in the first batch (can't select all transactions), you can extend it by rewriting some URL parameters. For example

http://your.site.url/manage_UndoForm?first_transaction:int=0&last_transaction:int=100&PrincipiaUndoBatchSize:int=100

will give you the latest 100 transactions on a single page.

The url with all the parameters can be obtained by clicking on the Earlier Transactions > link on the top right of the listing.

Answer 2

Try manage_UndoForm:

http://localhost:8080/Plone/manage_UndoForm

Or if the transaction is not shown up in this list, try a larger batch:

http://localhost:8080/Plone/manage_UndoForm?first_transaction:int=0&last_transaction:int=100&PrincipiaUndoBatchSize:int=100

You'll have to undo all transactions before the one that screwed up your site including that one.