Accessing historical content items of a content management system through placeholders

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• at least one non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:
• receive, from a content management system, one or more indications of content items contained in a previous version of a directory structure;
• generate placeholders to represent content items in the previous version of the directory structure, wherein the placeholders are generated based on the one or more indications, wherein the generated placeholders are smaller in size than the content items in the previous version of the directory structure;
• based on the one or more indications, present, at a user interface, a visual representation of the previous version of the directory structure, wherein the visual representation includes the placeholders representing the content items contained in the previous version of the directory structure, and wherein the visual representation is separate from a current version of the directory structure;
• transmit on a request to access a first placeholder in the visual representation of the previous version of the directory structure, wherein the request includes an identifier associated with the first placeholder;
• obtain, from the content management system, a first content item associated with the first placeholder based on the request;
• and
• update the visual representation of the previous version of the directory structure to replace the first placeholder with the first content item, wherein the updated visual representation visually differentiates the first content item from remaining placeholders in the visual representation based on one or more visual attributes indicating that the first content item is a downloaded content item and the remaining placeholders are representations of corresponding content items.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:

• receive, from a content management system, one or more indications of content items contained in a previous version of a directory structure;
• generate generating placeholders to represent content items in the previous version of the directory structure, wherein the placeholders are generated based on the one or more indications wherein the generated placeholders are smaller in size than the content items in the previous version of the directory structure;
• based on the one or more indications, present, at a user interface, a visual representation of the previous version of the directory structure, wherein the visual representation includes the placeholders representing the content items contained in the previous version of the directory structure, and wherein the visual representation is separate from a current version of the directory structure;
• transmit a request to access a first placeholder in the visual representation of the previous version of the directory structure, wherein the request includes an identifier associated with the first placeholder;
• obtain, from the content management system, a first content item associated with the first placeholder;
• and
• update the visual representation of the previous version of the directory structure to replace the first placeholder with the first content item, wherein the updated visual representation visually differentiates the first content item from remaining placeholders in the visual representation based on one or more visual attributes indicating that the first content item is a downloaded content item and the remaining placeholders are representations of corresponding content items.