Support

Then I'm sure you will appreciate the changes we've made. You will no longer be using our code for updates. You will be using Joomla!'s code. Joomla! will be the sole responsible for fetching the update information, notifying you about the updates, downloading the update and installing it on your site. You will only need to enter your Download ID in our component's Options page which, in turn, simply makes it available to Joomla!. Any problems you have with the update experience will be an issue with the code in Joomla! itself.

That said, let me explain your two reported issues:

The Akeeba and Admintools have had problems on the download, which perhaps is from the frequently changing download IDs in retrospect but I have never seen emails telling me about those

Ever since the introduction of download IDs in February 2010 (four years ago) there was exactly ONE (1) mass change of Download IDs: December 25th, 2013. We also didn't send out an email. Our previous attempts at mass communicating about the availability of hotfixes for major issues showed an open rate of 8%, a spam report rate of 3% (which caused our account to be blocked by MailChimp) and no reduction in the number of support requests.

The only economically sensible course of action is to do nothing more than publish an announcement on our site and answer the relatively few, but inevitable, support requests. There's a minority of people who will inevitably get frustrated, like you. Still, in the grand scheme of things, this made more sense than emailing each one of you personally. I know it sounds crazy and I thought the same thing... until I had to run my own business with hundreds of clients.

In all other cases when you had a valid Download ID the download failed for exactly these reasons which are beyond our control (and most beyond your control as well!):

• Network error (anyone's fault – you can never know what happened)
• Server firewalls blocking incoming traffic from our site or our CDN (host's fault)
• Server timeout during the download (host's fault)
• Unwriteable temporary directory without having enabled Joomla!'s FTP mode (we have documented this)
• Unwriteable directories on the site without having enabled Joomla!'s FTP mode (as above)

Joomla!'s extensions update will not be able to work around these issues, as they either can't be detected by PHP code (first three) or result in a warning (last two) which you have to act upon.

It's also worth noting that the first three issues affect ALL software being updated through the Internet including such disparate things as CMS (Joomla!, WordPress, ...), Operating Systems (Ubuntu Linux, Mac OS X, Windows), browsers (Firefox, Chrome), smartphone applications, smart TVs, even cars' entertainment systems (getting Carminat updates on my Megane has been a royal pain in the butt). Everything I've mentioned above are cases where I have personally been unable to install an update due to a network, device or firewall error. These are consumer products created by mega-billion corporations such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Canonical, Mozille (OK, not multi-billion but still a major player), Samsung, Renault. If the thousands of super smart people employed by these companies can't figure a better solution I'm sure that our tiny company of three people can't do it either. Plus, we don't control the hardware and software environment our software runs in, unlike these companies. I think you see the objective problem here.

Other times, backups have hung up in update processes, and those are unsolved but on a couple occasions I had to disable Akeeba in the update process to get core joomla updates done.

I believe you. However, unreported issues will of course go unsolved. We can't solve something we don't know it happens or when we are not given a log file. Next time this happens PLEASE do send us a support request attaching the log file of the Restore Point origin. This will help us at the very least understand what's going on and fix any bugs (or tell you what you have to do to work around a server restriction that may be causing this issue).

I don't have a specific problem to solve in this request, but do hope the stability I'd come to expect as a given with these tools improves in the next year of my subscription.

Absolutely. I think you must have seen the improvements by leaps and bounds in the last two years. We are always pushing for more features and more stability.