You do not need the Professional version to restore backups. This is clearly communicated at the top of the Manage Backups page, the documentation, and the video tutorials. Regardless, you do need some support which is only available if you pay a subscription so no, you didn’t waste your money. Okay?
You cannot restore a Joomla 3 backup directly on top of Joomla 4 site as explained in https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/akeeba-backup-joomla/restoring-backups.html#general-guidelines
Do not try to overwrite one Joomla! version family with a different one. Overwriting a major version with another (e.g. restoring a backup taken on Joomla! 3.7 on top of a site running Joomla! 2.5 or vice versa) or between different minor versions (e.g. restoring a backup taken on Joomla! 3.7 on top of a site running Joomla! 3.6 or vice versa) will NOT work. Joomla! moves files around between minor and major versions. Since the backup does not delete files not present in the backup archive this will end up with Joomla! being "confused" and malfunctioning. In these cases you should delete the existing files and folders (except, perhaps, user generated content) before restoring the backup. You can safely restore a sub-minor (path-level) version on top of another. For example, you can safely restore a Joomla! 3.7.5 site on top of a Joomla! 3.7.3 site or vice versa.
Your process should be:
- Download all backup archives to your computer
- Download and extract Akeeba Kickstart Core to your computer
- Delete all files and folders on your site
- Upload kickstart.php and the backup archive file(s) you want to restore to your site
- Access the /kickstart.php URL on your site to proceed with the restoration
You can understand the last two items better by watching https://www.akeeba.com/videos/1212-akeeba-backup/1618-abtc04-restore-site-new-server.html
Regarding the PHP version, no, you don’t NEED to downgrade PHP. You just need to make sure that the PHP OpenSSL extension is enabled for the PHP version you are using. If you don’t understand what this means, copy this paragraph to a support request to your hosting company. They will tell you what you need to do.
For example, my host has a page called PHP Configuration. I can go there to select which PHP extensions I want enabled. At the bare minimum, Joomla needs json, mysqlnd, openssl, mbstring, zlib, zip, xml, and curl for Joomla itself and its extensions to work right. Again, if you have no idea what that means ask your host; you’re paying them so they can help with that. I can’t help with hosting configuration because there is no standardized interface across hosts and I couldn’t possibly know how your hosts implements PHP configuration. There are even some hosts who provide no interface, you need to ask them to enable extensions and they modify the PHP configuration file directly, something neither you nor I can do directly.
Does that make more sense to you now?
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!
