Support

Hello,

UNiTE is an external tool, that will connect to the remote website, run a backup, download it and then extract it locally. This means that it will work with Joomla, WordPress and standalone websites, since we "talk" with the remote server using the API.

The link you posted is from October 2021, now Joomla 4 is way more supported since then, can you please try to let it run?

As far as I know it should work without problems

mhm... you're correct.

I'll investigate on this, thanks for the report.

I already have a version of UNiTE compatible with Joomla 4 —I wrote this in late August— but it needs some polishing and documentation. Other issues took priority in the past month and a half. I will try to finish it up, probably this week.

I just released version 5 which is compatible with Joomla 4 and has a lot more features, including support for JSON and YAML formats for the configuration file (the XML format is still there and 100% compatible).

The on-line documentation will be updated in the next half hour or so.

We will no longer supply PDF documentation without extensions, only ePub. Thank you for the heads up about the link, I will fix it very soon.

There are two reasons. One is practical, the other technical.

PDFs were a bad choice to begin with. PDFs are designed to be print proofs, not a way to disseminate documents to be read on digital devices. Unfortunately, when I needed to find a way to disseminate the documentation for off-line reading back in 2007 there was no other alternative. ePub is just a ZIP with HTML files, which means that they can be set to flow based on your screen size and chosen text size — but it can also be printed out.

Our documentation is written in DocBook XML 5 (using XMLMind's excellent DocBook Editor application). It is converted to other formats using the DocBook XSL stylesheets. The stylesheets do not convert directly to PDF; they convert to XSL-FO. Then we use Apache FOP to convert the XSL-FO document to PDF. However, development of XSL-FO stopped in 2017. As a result, the DocBook XSL stylesheets no longer support XSL-FO. The older stylesheets we are using might stop being developed soon as the one person who's doing the work has clearly stated that his priority is the newer stylesheets.

This makes using PDF files a double whammy. PDFs are not a good choice for the way most of our clients want to use the documentation (on their phone or tablet while using their laptop to work on their site). Moreover, creating PDFs is relying on an obsolete standard which is already dead for 5 years and a toolchain which might stop being developed in the near future, therefore we'd be unable to continue providing off-line documentation. Hence the choice of ePub which is just a ZIP file with HTML files and metadata. At worst you can extract it and browse the HTML files in your browser.

There are plenty of ePub readers, many of which are completely free of charge if not outright Free and Open Source Software. Calibre is the most well-known one and runs on Windows, Linux and macOS. It can even convert to PDF if you prefer PDFs; its interface is decidedly not modern but it works great and that's what I use on Linux. There is also Adobe Digital Editions for Windows, iOS/iPadOS and Android. On macOS I use ClearView X; on iOS/iPadOS I use Apple Books. Reading ePub files is very easy and it works much better than PDFs. Once you start using it you will see how much easier it is to use than PDFs, especially on smaller screens.