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Doing that automatically requires that you use Akeeba Backup Professional and the day-based quotas. Essentially, you can tell Akeeba Backup to keep up to X backups (like count quotas) but always keep the backup from the Yth of the month. Usually it's set up to keep the last 30 backups and the backup taken on the 1st of each month.

Harrie,

This is actually included in Akeeba Backup for a very long time (I think I added that in version 3.1 or so). Take a look at https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/akeeba-backup-documentation/configuration.html#basic-configuration and you'll see that you have MONTH and YEAR in there, making it dead easy to create monthly backups.

Now that I think of it, here's a simple workaround with Akeeba Backup Core. the only downside is that you only get to keep yesterday's backup. Set the filename to site-[HOST]-[YEAR]-[MONTH] and turn off all quotas. I guess that's what you were looking for in the first place ;)

You're welcome! The tooltip deliberately only shows the most common tags, not all of them; otherwise it would be a pageful :D

You can have automated backups with the Core release. Just take a look at the "Automating your Backup" section of our documentation. As it reads under "Front-end backup, for use with CRON":

This option is available in both the Akeeba Backup Core and Akeeba Backup Professional releases. You don't need to subscribe to the Professional edition to use it.

Regarding what you need to do:
- Go to Configuration
- In the archive name enter site-[HOST]-[YEAR]-[MONTH]
- Disable ALL quota settings. All of them! Uncheck their boxes.
- Save. Done.
That's all. The file name will take care of keeping the correct backup. Let me help you with that. During December 2011, the file name will be site-www.example.com-2011-12. This will happen on December 1st, December 2nd, December 3rd, ..., December 31st. On January 1st, 2012 the new filename of the backup will be site-www.example.com-2012-01. The same on January 2nd, 3rd and so on.

Since there is nothing telling Akeeba Backup to remove the old backup archives, the site-www.example.com-2011-12 will contain the backup of your site as it was on December 31st.

And so on.

I exercise my patience daily, but you are one of the people who do understand what I say and do follow my instructions, so I have no problem giving you as much details as you request :)

Here is what I mean by the file name. For simplicity's sake, let's pretend that the name of your backup archive is set to "test". Every time you start a backup, manually or automatically, Akeeba Backup will try to create the backup archive file "test.jpa". Since the filename is always the same, every new backup will overwrite the previous backup. You are overwriting an existing file.

Now, let's take it to the next level. Let's name the file "test-[MONTH]". The [MONTH] part is being replaced by the two digit representation of the month. For every backup taken in December, the name of the backup archive file will be test-12.jpa (12 = December). This will be true for a backup taken on December 1st, December 2nd, December 3rd, ..., December 31st. So, all the December backups will be named test-12.jpa. The last backup with this name will be the backup taken on December 31st.

When January comes, the filename changes to test-01.jpa (01 = January). So, what happens on January 1st, is something awesome! You no are not overwriting the backup archive created in December. Therefore you can know with absolute certainty that the file test-12.jpa contains the last backup taken on December, therefore the backup of December 31st.

So, we are abusing the backup archive name to create a poor man's versioning system. You can not keep the backup from the 1st of each month, but you can automatically keep the backup from the last day of each month. Pretty close, huh?

There is no additional "magic" to the filename. The filename controls nothing except, of course, how the backup archive will be named :)

You're welcome! If you have any more questions, feel free to ask :)