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Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4.2.0 Stable

Released on: 2015-04-01 07:05 CDT

Release highlights

Joomla! 3.3 and 3.4 only. We discontinued Joomla! 2.5 support in January 2015 as previously announced.

Deprecated features have been removed: post-setup page, Site Transfer Wizard, System Restore Points, Extension Filters, Lite Mode. See below for alternatives.

Alternatives to obsolete features

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 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 responsible and touch-optimised since more than two years ago!

Changelog

Bug fixes

  • [LOW] ANGIE would throw a memory outage error on extreme circumstances when the database server connected and disconnected immediately
  • [LOW] Prevent usage of negative profile ID in CLI backups
  • [MEDIUM] Import from S3 could be a byte off

New features

  • Always exclude the configured Joomla! log directory, no matter where it is
  • Check for obsolete PHP versions and printing a warning
  • gh-528 Native support for Microsoft Live OneDrive
  • gh-529 Added support for uploading archives in subdirectories while using FTP post-processing engine
  • gh-530 Profile filter in the Manage Backups page
  • gh-530 Show profile title in a tooltip when hovering over the profile ID in Manage Backups page

Removed features

  • Removed Extension Filters. For the same reasons we removed SRP: this cannot work as expected in Joomla! 3.x.
  • Removed Joomla! 2.5 support
  • Removed Lite Mode in the front-end. Smartphones are now the norm and Joomla! 3.x offers a responsive back-end. Just use it from your smartphone!
  • Removed post-setup page; these messages are now handled through Joomla!'s Post-Installation Messages feature
  • Removed the Site Transfer Wizard. You can use the DirectFTP/DirectSFTP engines; or use Upload to FTP/SFTP and check the Upload Kickstart option (preferred method)
  • Removed the System Restore Point feature; please make a full site backup before updating your extensions. Joomla! 3.x requires full backups due to the way ACL, Categories, Tags and Content History work; that's why the SRP feature was removed.