Download Our Latest Software

Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4.2.4 Stable

Released on: 2015-06-22 19:00 CDT

Alternatives to obsolete features removed in 4.2.0

Since Akeeba Backup 4.2.0 the features deprecated since 4.0.0 have been removed. Below you can find alternatives if you miss the functionality and need an equivalent solution.

Post-setup page. All messages are now handled through Joomla!'s Post-Installation Messages component. This change first appeared in Akeeba Backup 4.0 when installed on Joomla! 3.2 and later. Now this is now the only way to review the post-installation messages.

Site Transfer Wizard. The wizard didn't make site transfers possible, it only helped you set up the backup profile. You can still use the DirectFTP and DirectSFTP archiver engine to the same effect – after all, that's the only thing the wizard did for you, enable these archiver engines. However we recommend using regular JPA or ZIP backup archives with the Upload to FTP and Upload to SFTP post-processing engines along with the Upload Kickstart option. This new method is much more stable and far less likely to fail midway through the site transfer.

System Restore Point and Extension Filters. These two features were removed for the same reason: since Joomla! 1.6 it is no longer feasible to backup and restore, or even exclude, a single extension of your site. Joomla!'s ACL system means that everything in it (articles, categories, extensions and even third party items) are linked together through the #__assets table. On top of that, the Tags and Content Versioning features added in Joomla! 3.1 and 3.2 respectively made everything also depend on the UCM set of tables. Due to the way these tables are constructed it's impossible to make a complete backup of an extension's state without also backing up the entire system states. This makes the System Restore Points either incomplete backups (they were, indeed) or would make their restoration potentially kill your site (we didn't go that way for obvious reasons). Furthermore, removing a single extension would either leave behind orphan records or create holes in the tables, both options leading to database inconsistencies which could make your site fail to work correctly. For these reasons we removed both features and have to note that no, they DID NOT work properly in Joomla! 1.6, 1.7, 2.5, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4; no, they cannot be fixed (what do you think we were trying to do the last four years?); and no, they are not coming back exactly because they DO NOT work and CAN NOT be made to work. There is no alternative. We recommend simply taking full backups of your site before any major change such as upgrading to a new major version of an extension.

Lite Mode. This feature was developed back when featurephones with limited web browsers were the norm. In the eight years which have elapsed since that time smartphones with full featured browsers became the norm, Joomla! became responsive and other mobile devices with full features web browsers (tablets, netbooks / mini-laptops such as the 2015 MacBook, two-in-ones such as Microsoft Surface Pro etc) have emerged. For this reason the easiest, most stable and outright convenient way to back up your site while on the move is logging in to the backend of your Joomla! 3 site from your mobile device and use Akeeba Backup normally. Our interface is responsive and touch-optimised since mid-2012!

Joomla! 3.3/3.4 only

Only Joomla! 3.3 and 3.4 (and 3.5 which is planned for release in a couple of months) is supported by this version. We strongly recommend using the latest Joomla! At the time of this writing it is 3.4.1. Using older versions is NOT recommended for security reasons.

PHP 5.3.4 or later 5.x version is required

This version requires PHP 5.3.4 or later (e.g. 5.3.29 which is twenty five versions newer than PHP 5.3.4), 5.4, 5.5 or 5.6. Please note that PHP 5.3 is obsolete since August 2014 and we're going to stop supporting it without warning in future versions of our software. We'd like to remind you that Joomla! 3.x does not currently support PHP 7. Since our software runs inside Joomla! by definition our software doesn't currently run on PHP 7 either.

Note: there is no such thing as PHP 6. PHP versions jumped from 5.6 to 7.0. Why? Well, it's a long story. TL;DR: It doesn't have to make sense, just accept it.

Changelog

Bug fixes

  • [HIGH] Restoring on MySQL would be impossible unless you used the MySQL PDO driver
  • [LOW] Desktop notifications for backup resume showed "%d" instead of the time to wait before resume
  • [LOW] Push notifications should not be enabled by default
  • [MEDIUM] Dropbox integration would not work under many PHP 5.5 and 5.6 servers due to a PHP issue. Workaround applied.

New features

  • Support utf8mb4 in CRON jobs

Miscellaneous changes

  • ANGIE: Improve memory efficiency of the database engine
  • Switching the default log level to All Information and Debug