How to see what changes the client made, restoring original site

Hi, what kind of changes do you have to find? and why? what are they (client) looking for?

Hey thanks for replying @dimitris33,

1. changes would pertain to any style changes made to the site, such as CSS changes
2. not sure why exactly I figure the best route was to simply give them our last backup of the site before delivering it to them.
3. client is looking to undo the changes that they had made by themselves.

The big issue with this is that there are transactions going through the site, so I was tasked to bring back our latest backup of the site (to revert back the style changes made), and to add current transactions that the client’s live site has recently made in the database (which I figure may be an issue in itself).

if it is only css then you can compare the original with theirs.

CSS changes: compare original/backup css files with current. (diff)
Content changes: if revisions are being kept, you can use them to go back.

If you have more areas where the client edited thing, please let us know.

Could be a complex project depending on the changes the client made.

I hope you’re charging by the hour.

Once you’ve undone the damage, some suggestions:

If you’re not already doing so, give them a Child Theme to add their own CSS to; they can use it to over-ride the theme’s php files too. Or install a plugin that enables them to add their own CSS. Either way, their code and your code can easily be identified.

If they want to roll back changes to individual pages, show them how the “Revisions” feature works (assuming it was enabled in the first place; if not, suggest you enable it in future).

Ensure you have reliable daily or weekly backups in future, so you can roll back the whole website in one go according to the client’s whims.

Make sure you get paid for sorting out what sounds like a mess of their own making.

@dimitris33 that seems like the best route, thanks for your help, will be looking into this.

@mike thank you, checking css file diffs were essential to solving this issue, luckily it can be narrowed down to just the css changes. Will update again soon on how this works out.

@jason King, that is a gold-tier suggestion, the child theme concept seems to solve a lot of headaches like this, separating the main theme from the client edits. Haha I can’t stop to laugh about identifying code because I at least somewhat add comments to my code. Also I will look more into revisions for this issue.

Thanks guys, these tips will save me from buying a bottle of aspirin, will update on how it goes but for now I will close it as resolved, thanks again for your time and help!

Update:

So I was debugging the code on my local machine, using the last backup (which was about 3 years old), so it seems DB and WP are linking YET it keeps shooting out more errors (see the link: https://i.imgur.com/VRJCNk1.png) when I fix one (usually by commenting out code in functions.php) another error rises. I may, unfortunately, find myself without an old version to help check differences.

However, since this is a premium theme I was wondering what are the chances for just resetting the theme. The issue with that is that the site uses shortcodes in the content editor to apply grid layouts (another variable in the issue)…

Still trying to hunt down what makes the site output wonky content, I wish there was a Revision function for when the editor is used in the WP back-end.

Cheers,
Thanks for all the fantastic input. I will deff use child themes for future client projects.