Support

Hi guys,

you are right, but this is the way the plugin was designed to work. Clearly, I hadn't thought of that situation. The problem is that the plugin asks Live Update for the availability of an updated version. However, Live Update can only read an update stream which contain only one update, the last published version. Therefoew, it's picking up the alpha.

Now I have a chicken and egg problem. If I revert the update file to 2.1.14, everybody with the alpha release will see the 2.1.14 as the current version. However, if they click Update, then 2.1.14 will be installed on top of 2.2.x, which will kill their site. If I leave it as it is, you see the 2.2.a2 as an available update and the plugin will keep on sending an email to you. If I update Live Update itself to support multiple versions in the update stream, all existing version of Admin Tools will stop showing the availability of updates, which is a huge problem as people will end up stuck with old, outdated versions with known issues. It's a triple losing game, any way I look at it.

So, the only workaround I have to propose is to disable that plugin until the 2.2 series reaches at least RC status.

HI Klaus,

1. I have this in Akeeba Backup, I don't have this (and never had) in Admin Tools. Even if I add it (which I am planning to do), it will affect future releases of Admin Tools, not the 2.1.x series which is your problem.

2. Is it? I don't think so. You can receive your email through a web interface, your PC with Thunderbird at home, a Mac with Sparrow at work, your iPhone with Apple Mail on the road and so on. Each one of them has its own spam rules. One one of them the mail could be marked as spam, on the others not. You might also read the email and trash it, the phone rings and you have now forgotten about the new version. I can go on forever. The bottom line is that if the plugin sends one email, it can be missed. That's why it sends one email every 24 hours, not every 4 hours (I have it installed on all of my sites, I only get one email every 24 hours per site).

3. It's similar to #1. It would still affect only the future releases, unless I decided to screw up everyone who has installed 2.2.a1/.a2, as I would now prompt them to install 2.1.14 on top of 2.2.x which would funk up their sites (see my previous reply for details).

Therefore, the only TEMPORARY workaround is to disable the plugin. Future versions will have the same feature as Akeeba Backup, i.e. you will be able to select the minimum stability level to be notified for. I can not go back in time to change the old releases and I can not make any change in the update streams on the server without causing dead sites. I don't know about you, but I prefer 10 people complaining about something as trivial as receiving many emails than one person complaining about something as grave as my software killing his site. It's a matter of perspective, I guess.

Ah, you guys are right. I have typed 10800 seconds (3 hours) instead of 86400 (24 hours). Sorry! I still don't get why the plugin runs on my sites only once every 24 hours. Coincidence? Might be.

I will tell you how the plugin works. On every page load, the plugin checks the last time it ran. If it was less than three hours ago (bug: its should be 24 hours), it will not proceed. Then, it "throws the dice". This means, it takes a random number from 1 to 5 and compares it to 3. This means that it will have a 20% chance of running. This is our "failsafe", preventing the plugin from firing by two different page loads at the exact same time. Then it will ask Live Update if there's an update available and, if so, send you an email.

As you can understand, you need enough traffic for the plugin to even execute. This is what is causing the randomness in the times of the messages. If you have a site like AkeebaBackup.com with dozens of thousands of pageloads every day, the emails get sent like clockwork. If you have a site with a dozen visits every day, you might not get any emails at all.