Akeeba Backup for WordPress

Monday, 22 February 2016 13:01 CST

user12942

I've seen an error on previous updates that has repeated identically on doing the latest update to 1.6.4 (pro) on two domains.

The update says completed okay, but I get three repeated lines above that message that says:
Notice: Undefined variable: sql in /home/anydomain/public_html/wp-content/plugins/akeebabackupwp/app/Awf/Database/Driver/Mysqli.php on line 501

I also just noted on first visit back to Akeeba Backup page on one of my domains in WP I got:
Warning: base64_decode() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in /home/mydomain/public_html/wp-content/plugins/akeebabackupwp/app/Awf/Session/Segment.php on line 133

On going to the Akeeba backup page again, that message doesn't show again. But if I go to the update page and press refresh, I can get those Undefined Error messages again (3 x same message)

Any ideas what's going on and what those messages indicate? Backups to Amazon S3 working fine as ever. I have iThemes Security running, could it be blocking something?

Tuesday, 23 February 2016 00:58 CST

nicholas

This is just a cosmetic issue. We are already aware of it and have fixed it. Since it's a very low priority cosmetic issue it doesn't warrant triggering an update. You can still use –and update– Akeeba Backup without a problem, despite it. Thank you for the heads up anyway :)

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Wednesday, 24 February 2016 05:23 CST

user12942

Thanks Nicholas - It just seemed I couldn't find any info on the problem and it had been around for a while.

Incidentally, I only just found your reply in my Spam folder, it seems whenever I get replies from Akeeba support, they are marked by Spam Assassin (on level 5, default).

Generally Spam Assassin does a good job for me on that setting, only one or two legitimate other emails ever getting filtered, one from a sales dept of a print firm and the other some some slightly more dubious marketing mailing list.

I just mention it in case it's something in your content SA doesn't like and it maybe is happening to others? I don't seem to have much control in Whitelisting with SA but I'll have another check of it's config on the server.

Wednesday, 24 February 2016 07:13 CST

nicholas

SpamAssassin has two dubious rules. First, it assumes that a message without an HTML opening tag is spam. This is of course not true and does happen with most mail applications and sites. The other massive failure of SpamAssassin is that it assumes the lack of a non-standards compliant priority header means that the message is spam. Not only is this header not part of any standard (I checked, it only exists because Microsoft implemented their own thing in Outlook instead of the standard mail priority header...) but even if it was the RFCs do NOT mandate the use of a priority header in emails: if one is not set the email must be considered to have medium priority. So, basically, SpamAssassin is being SpamAsinine – and ignores SPF/DKIM which is the safest way to confirm that a mail message is NOT spam.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Wednesday, 24 February 2016 11:07 CST

user12942

Brilliant answer as ever Nicholas, I have found SpamAss(assin) to be a bit of a pain since having to move away from SiteGround where they did have the rather useful SpamExperts (once it was tamed).

My current server provider (shared on CloudLinux) offers MagicSpam or SpamAssassin. I gave up on MagicSpam almost straight away as it checks stuff before it even gets to the mail folders and was ditching lots of genuine stuff including emails from me on one domain to me on another (and no chance of retrieving what it ditched!).

I'm wanting to move to a VPS soon (when I can afford it), any suggestions on the best Anti-Spam software/solution to use/install?

Wednesday, 24 February 2016 23:37 CST

nicholas

SpamAssassin is still the least annoying and can be tamed. However, the best thing I've found to date is what cPanel does: if a sender is caught by SpamAssassin it will send an email back to the sender with a link. If a human clicks on the link the address is whitelisted. This works well when you want actual humans to be able to mail you no matter what, of course doesn't work so well with transactional and mailing list emails.

Or use Google Apps to have Google and their brilliant anti-spam hive mind process your email. That's what I do: I'm foregoing my privacy to stop worrying about spam.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Thursday, 25 February 2016 07:09 CST

user12942

Thanks again for the advice. Much appreciated.

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