Support

Please note that we do not send out any update notifications to anyone. For more information, we even have a troubleshooting topic. Please read it in order to understand how these emails are sent by your site to your email account.

The email your site sent to you did say that the version was an alpha, just like our release announcement. I've tried to make it very prominent so that people don't accidentally upgrade to alphas. There's also a Minimum Stability option in Component Parameters. More on that towards the end of my reply.

Now, regarding your problem. You tried to downgrade from 3.5.a2 to 3.4.3 which is not supported. Instead, here's what you have to do so that you don't lose any settings and/or older backups. Start by removing the following directories:
- administrator/components/com_akeeba EXCEPT the administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup directory and the administrator/components/com_akeeba/akeeba/serverkey.php file. If you remove that directory and that file you will lose your existing backups and/or settings.
- components/com_akeeba
- administrator/modules/mod_akadmin
- media/com_akeeba
- plugins/system/plg_srp
- plugins/system/plg_akeebaupdatecheck
- plugins/system/plg_aklazy
- plugins/system/plg_oneclickaction
Only now should you attempt to install Akeeba Backup 3.4.3. Trying to take a new backup should work.

After that, please click on Component Parameters and set the Minimum Stability to Stable. Click on Save & Close. Click on the Update Found button. In the new page, click on Refresh update information. It should now report that you have the latest version. From now on, Akeeba Backup will only notify you about stable releases.

Chris,

I am sorry that you feel that me stating the fact is arrogance.

Did you or did you not receive an email from your site, not me? Check your email headers and the plugin on your site. If the email came from me while stating otherwise, that would be arrogance, of course.

Did the email or did it not state that the release is an alpha? It does say it's an alpha. Yes, it's easy to miss – but I didn't say that it's your fault that you missed it. That would be arrogance.

Did or did it not Akeeba Backup have an option to select the minimum stability for update notifications? It does and I put it there when the 3.3 alpha releases caused a similar situation. Unfortunately, the default setting back then was left to Alpha. That was fixed sometime around 3.4. Since it's a user setting, I just can't go ahead and force it to read Stable at all times. I did document it though. Stating the existence of an option is arrogance? I don't understand how.

I am not sure about which automated response you are talking about. Are you talking about the page I linked you to? If it's so, please note the context of that page which is in its title. It's the response I give out to people asking me to stop emailing them. I told you to read it so that you understand that there is a plugin on your site, not to take offence. I could also link you to the documentation page, but I doubt the utility of such a reference in the context of our conversation.

Finally, do note that I did try to give you instructions to downgrade. Since when is trying to help a proof of arrogance? Good Lord, Chris! I am trying to help you out with the unintentional update.

I understand and accept what you're saying about updates. As I've written in another thread regarding automated updates, the next version of Akeeba Backup will have two significant changes regarding updates:

• Joomla!'s extension updater will no longer be supported. The way it works makes it impossible to have it respect your minimum stability preference and will mislead you into installing unstable versions. Since I can't fix Joomla!'s core, I will remove support for this Joomla! feature and allow you to update through Live Update, as I always did, a solution which does respect your minimum stability preference.
• There will be a "nag screen" before installing alpha, beta and RC releases in Live Update. Hopefully, this will prevent you from blindly updating to an unstable software even if your minimum stability setting is wrongly set.
• I will add a post-installation option which will allow you to select your minimum stability level for updates.

Now, regarding this comment of yours:

You tried to downgrade from 3.5.a2 to 3.4.3 which is not supported.

Why isn't such a function supported whenever your software instructs the end user community to upgrade to the "latest wrong" version huh?

In order to support an upgrade from version X to version Y I have to take a look at which files and folders are included in the old version (X) and which are included in the new version (Y). Then I have to add a list of the files which are present in X and no longer present in Y in the post-installation script, removing the unnecessary files which would cause a problem. In order to support downgrades (going from the newer version Y to the older version X) I would have to travel back in time and include the files present in Y, but not in X, in version X's installer. Obviously, this is impossible. That's why no software, including mine, has ever supported downgrading without some sort of manual procedure on the user's part. The manual procedure necessary I told you in my last post. Instead of wasting your time with a scornful reply, why don't you just follow my advice?

You're a service provider charging good money.

Act like one.

7.79 EUR for personalised support, replying to both of your posts within minutes of receiving them and I've already said that I am working on a way to mitigate the issues you and other users are facing. What else do you want me to do, Chris? Travel back in time and fix the Live Update of 3.4.3? I'd want that more than you do and, frankly, if someone could get me a time machine I would do it without a second thought. But since we're stuck with 2012's technology, please let me fix this issue for the next version of my software. Thanks.