Support

The front-end backup URL performs a single backup step and sends a redirection (HTTP 302) header to force the client to advance to the next page, which performs the next step and so forth. You will only see a message upon completion, should it be successful or not. There are a few limitations, though:

• It is not designed to be run from a normal web browser, but from an unattended cron script, utilizing wget or cron as a means of accessing the function.
• The script is not capable of showing progress messages.
• Normal web browsers tend to be "impatient". If a web page returns a bunch of redirection headers, the web browser thinks that the web server has had some sort of malfunction and stop loading the page. It will also show some kind of "destination unreachable" message. Remember, these browsers are meant to be used on web pages which are supposed to show some content to a human. This behaviour is normal. Most browsers will quit after they encounter the twentieth page redirect response, which is bound to happen. Do not report a "bug" stating that Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Opera or another browser doesn't work with the front-end backup feature. It was NOT meant to work by design and you've been sufficiently warned.
• Command line utilities, by default, will also give up loading a page after it has been redirected a number of times. For example, wget gives up after 20 redirects, curl does so after 50 redirects. Since Akeeba Backup redirects once for every step, it is advisable to configure your command line utility with a large number of redirects; about 10000 should be more than enough for virtually all sites.