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Site Restoration

#31342 Does it make sense to use Kickstart to clean up a site?

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
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Environment Information

PHP version
n/a
CMS Type
Other
CMS Version
n/a
Backup Tool Version
n/a
Kickstart version
n/a

Latest post by tampe125 on Monday, 13 May 2019 06:05 CDT

paurray
Hi Akeeba Team

My apologies if this is just outright stupid or has been already been asked.
The thing is I have a Joomla site which is lets say 10 years old.
At some point I installed just about every Components/Plugins/Modules for Joomla.
Later I uninstalled about 90% of these items at the Joomla level.
My site is currently at 2.5 GB and I am doing some spring cleaning.
I know that the php data base is not really all that big but there are the remains of many of those Components/Plugins/Modules.
And am thinking whilst not large they can not help the site run smoothly.

I am wondering if I were to extract a version of my site with Akeeba Kickstarter and uploaded it and restore it to a new location would this in end effect eliminate some of the what I can only describe as skeletons in the cellar old Components/Plugins/Modules at the PHP level which I uninstalled at the Joomla level? Maybe other things as well? Would it be mad to even try something like this? Maybe there is a better way?

Hope this makes some kind of sense and thanks for any thoughts!

Paul

Helping you learn beyond your finalBUG

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Hello,

what you're doing is admirable, since every webmaster sooner or later should do a "spring cleaning".
The thing is : Akeeba Backup will copy all your files and folders, regardless they are linked to an installed extension or not. It's almost impossible to know which folders an extension is creating (that was the main reason to kill System Restore Points years ago), moreover we want to take a more conservative approach: we will backup everything you're telling us to do (ie Folder and Files exclusions).
The only way you can truly delete useless files, is to take a full backup of your site and restore it locally. Then try to understand what's happening when you delete some bigger folders.
There will be some file leftovers, but you should be able to chop down your site size.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡นItalian: native ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡งEnglish: good โ€ข ๐Ÿ• My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

paurray
Hi Davide

Thanks for your kind words and encouragement.

The only way you can truly delete useless files, is to take a full backup of your site and restore it locally. Then try to understand what's happening when you delete some bigger folders.

There will be some file leftovers, but you should be able to chop down your site size.


This is what I am doing now.

thanks

Paul

Helping you learn beyond your finalBUG

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
You're welcome!
Let me know if you need further help.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡นItalian: native ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡งEnglish: good โ€ข ๐Ÿ• My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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