Release highlights

Simplified interface. You will notice substantial changes in the user interface as far as the control panel (main page), Manage Backups and Configuration pages go, as well as the backup restoration script (ANGIE). These changes were implemented as the result of our user experience (UX) study in partnership with UX experts Lucid Fox. This is just the beginning of this process, with the ultimate goal of making Akeeba Backup even easier to use.

Site Transfer Wizard. Yes, the Site Transfer Wizard is back! We wrote everything from the ground up, taking your feedback about easier site transfers to heart. We believe it's so self-explanatory that we decided to not document it; instead, all the instructions appear on the wizard itself as you use it. We are looking forward to your feedback on this feature which is available on both the Core (free of charge) and Professional (for a fee) versions!

New Amazon S3 engine. After several hard to fix issues with Amazon's official SDK we decided to write our own S3 engine. We read the API documentation, made ourselves a couple of gallons of coffee and three weeks later we have a faster, smaller and more stable S3 connection engine. Moreover, there's now only one "Upload to Amazon S3" Post-Processing option. If you were using the "Upload to Amazon S3 (Legacy)" option your backup profiles will be automatically upgraded. As a result of the smaller S3 engine size your backup size MAY be smaller after the update by one to two Megabytes.

We are aware that the video tutorials do not reflect the current interface and may be slightly off with regards to your experience using the component (the tutorials look more complicated than what you actually experience). We kindly ask for your patience as we're preparing new tutorials.

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 3.4.4. Using older versions is NOT recommended for security reasons.

PHP 5.4 or later 5.x version is required

We have raised the minimum PHP version requirement to 5.4.0 in this version. The component will not work on PHP 5.3 and will, in fact, refuse to install it. 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] No error thrown when the engine state cannot be saved while the backup is in progress
• [HIGH] The database storage option for the temporary data didn't work
• [LOW] Database schema self-healing was disabled
• [LOW] The backup size would be inflated if "Upload each part immediately" is enabled and it takes multiple step to post process a single archive part [PRO]
• [MEDIUM] FTP/SFTP browser would fail on some servers when you don't provide a starting directory [PRO]
• [MEDIUM] Updated Dropbox post processing engine due to changes on their servers [PRO]

New features

• "Exclude error logs" filter, enabled by default, to prevent broken backup archives when error logs change their size / are rotated while the backup is in progress
• ANGIE: Added throttle speed for replacing data
• Akeeba Backup will ask you to enter your Download ID before showing you available updates. [PRO]
• Akeeba Backup will ask you to run the Configuration Wizard when it detects it's necessary. One less thing for you to remember!
• Automatically exclude folders related to version control systems
• JSON API: Return an error if preflight configuration checks indicate a critical error (e.g. output directory not writeable)

Miscellaneous changes

• ANGIE: Removed the confusing messages about restoring to a different site or PHP version
• ANGIE: Simplified the final page ("Finished")
• CLI scripts should now print a warning instead of immediately dying if you try running them in PHP 5.2 or earlier (what are you doing with this kind of archaic PHP versions on your production servers anyway?!!) [PRO]
• Desktop notifications are now optional. If you have already enabled them don't worry, they won't be disabled (your browser remembers the previous setting).
• Improved layout for the Control Panel page
• Make it more obvious that the Scheduling Information tabs actually DO work when you click on them
• Manage Backups: "Part 00" would be displayed when there is just one backup part present. Button label changed to "Download".
• Manage Backups: Simplified the page layout
• New icon colour palette for easier identification of the Control Panel icons
• No more yellow flash when loading the Akeeba Backup control panel page
• Remove the title from the popover tips
• The profile ID is displayed in the profile selection drop-down

Removed features

• Removed post-installation messages
• Removed the "Upload to Amazon S3 (legacy API)" post-processing engine. Existing backup profiles will be automatically migrated to the "Upload to Amazon S3" engine. [PRO]