Our backup software backs up all files and folders under your site's root and all database tables in your site's database. This has been the case since the very first public release of this backup software seventeen years ago (October 2006) under the name JoomlaPack. This has never changed, nor would it make sense to change as you'll read below.
Had you not said you've been using our backup software already “with great confidence” I could understand why someone could be “rather disappointed” that the backup software cannot magically know which files and folders under their web root belong to what that person considers in their head to be ‘their site’. The answer to that is, of course, that Wordpress (and Joomla) cannot communicate that kind of information because it's not recorded anywhere to begin with. Therefore, your conflicting statements perplex me.
The fact is that you can always create any arbitrarily named file and folder in your site's root which is required for the operation of your site without telling your CMS anything about it, such as files to connect your site to third party services (e.g. Google Web Master Console's validation files), provide information about your site to browsers (e.g. the .well-known folder), store additional media or download files etc. For this reason, a backup software would be crippled and practically useless if it did not automatically include all files, folders, and database tables it can find under your web site's root and database respectively. That's why all backup software works like that, allowing you to exclude what you do not wish to back up.
As has been the case since late 2006, you can of course tell Akeeba Backup to exclude folders, files, and database tables from the backup using the “Files and Directories Exclusion” and “Database Tables Exclusion” features in Akeeba Backup's main page. We even have a video tutorial and documentation pages:
is there a French translation of the interface?
No, we do not provide any official translations as mentioned at the bottom of the download page. Over there we even link to the news article from 2018 where we explain why that is the case.
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!
