After 3 years of absence from the tech-blogging scene I am doing it again. I’v been blogging about all things WordPress over at wordpress.designpraxis.at, where i used to maintain several WordPress plugins. So this post also functions as a landing page for redirects from there.
My activities have been going to other directions as you can see when looking around on this very site. So the topics I’ll be blogging here will mainly be on jQuery, Web-Development in general mostly related top front-end topics like CSS and XHTML.
To all of you, being asking what will happen to my WordPress plugins: You are welcome to take over development, just as April from springthistle is about to do with BackUpWordPress. Thanks April!
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Hello, Thank you for this plug-in. I noticed something today while I was working on styling this site I acquired the plugin for. I have the backups scheduled to run everyday, but I noticed that the performance of the site was fine this morning, but while I was styling the site the backup occurred at the same time around 8:52am. It seems like some glitch occurred because ever since the back-up happened, the site has been running very very slowly. I ended up de-activating the plugin, then re-activating it, and tried to find a setting where I could choose what time of day the update happened so that it didn’t interfere with my work, but I don’t see a setting like that. The site seems slightly better since I deactivated, then re-activated the plugin, but it still is a bit slow. I’m not sure how to fix this…
Hi Jenny,
Thanks for your feedback! Unfortunately I am away from WordPress plugin development now since three (!) years. That’s actually the reason for closing down wordpress.designpraxis.at forever. Probably bad news is that I do not support my plugins anymore. Good news on the otherhand is, as far as BackUpWordPress is concerned, that April from springthistle is about to take over development. You can get in contact with her here.
Great plugin – Thanks. I am using it on all my blogs and that should protect my users and save me a ton of time. – it just needs to auto back up the Mysql files
– I will have to look for another plugin for that 
thx Samiam, plz don’t forget to give feedback to the ppl who have taken over development
Hi there, I know you haven’t been supporting or updating this great BackupWordpress plugin for a while… However, I got a URGENT matter that needs attention asap please! I don’t want to screw up my site and I don’t want to do anything til I get your opinion as to what I should do. I’m running WP 3.0.1 and was just trying out a bunch of themes. I activated your latest Backup plugin 0.4.5 and saved a few backups today. The first time I activated Full Backup Weekly = it seemed fine and was only 62mb. The second time I activated both Full Backup Weekly and SQL Only Backup Daily. The archives grew to 198mb. I deactivated the SQL Only Backup Daily saved a third time, but it still was 198mb. Anyway, sometime after the first save I noticed on that my Dashboard website link at the top left was missing, but the WordPress logo was still there?? I have no idea if the two are related, but I couldn’t get it back? So I was tried restoring from the first backup archive, but I got a warning from your plugin saying that not all the files will be restored (missing database files or something?) and I should manually upload this and that…can’t remember? I clicked away and deactivate the backup plugin. The site preview link was still missing??
So, basically I just got a few questions. One, do you think if I update the WP core files to 3.0.4 will that fix the link problem?
It seems like its something written to the core as it only affects the dashboard.
Two, whats the highest version of WP this plugin will work with?
Lastly, would you advise me not to use this plugin at all? If so what other reliable database backup plugin do you recommend?
Thanks so much!
GB, thx for your comment!
As you said, I haven’t been supporting or developing BackUpWordPress for quite some time which is three(!) year now. Three years in web-development are in fact ages.
I’ll just get to answer you questions and suggest what I would do in your situation.
1) First of all, to get to the highest possible version of WordPress core is always a really good choice. I personally wouldn’t stick to using plugins which are incompatible with the most current stable WordPress core, but rather look for alternatives. Before upgrading though, do an old-school backup of your installation. An additional advice would be to uninstall (delete) plugins which are not working properly with your bolg/hoster/etc. AFTER the backup and PRIOR to the upgrade.
2) Second, you can do SQL-backups with almost any plugin that suits you. Be sure that the plugin supports file compression so files are small enough to be sent via email. At least that’s what I do, and I am still using BackUpWordPress for this.
3) If you are running a huge blog with big amounts of posts/images/media, note that file backups are getting huge as well. You may run into disk quota limits, performance issues during backup and much more problems that prevent you blog from functioning properly. So if that is the case, use a) some automatic, scheduled file backup feature you ISP might offer you (mine does so, and I use this for file backups), b) do manual backups regularly
In fact, the problems you can run into when dealing with file-structure backups are numerous and involve issues outside of WordPress, such as php and webserver configurations, hosting features etc. Thats also the main reason why BackUpWordPress never got out of beta.
Again, contact April from sprinthistle (see original post on top). She is currently taking over BackUpWordPress develoment.
Best, Roland
I have been reading out a few of your posts and i must say clever stuff. I will definitely bookmark your website.
I’m trying to learn about your back-up plug-in I believe is plugged in and working. I says that I have some back-ups already done. Where are they backed up to and are they easy to restore if needed? Need some help – Thanks.
Hi Les, thanks for your comment. Unfortunately I am three years away from working on BackUpWordPress. The Backups are in fact zipped files residing in your wp-content folder under backups. If you download and extract them, they should contain database backups (SQL file), file system backup or both. Reupload to the appropriate installation destination and that’s about it.
In any case, read all info you can find on the WordPress Codex pages in backup. That will help a lot if you run into troubles.
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I installed this plugin on a fresh WordPress 3.0.4 install on a Linux web server and it just keeps trying to build the primary folders. So far, I have 36 attempted builds and no backups. I will need to disable this backup before it fills up the backup folder and starts throwing errors.
Ed, Yes you are right. Fielesytem backups do depend on configuration settings outside of the scope of wordpress. If the Plugin doesn’ t work for you, disable it. Please remember it is still beta!
Hi Roland: It worked outstandingly on my Windows 7 OS and again on our local Linux development environment but fails miserably on our Demo and Production Linux servers located on GoDaddy.com. I really like this plugin since I need to backup both content and data on a consistent basis. What would need to change @ GoDaddy.com to make this plugin work? Feel free to contact me at my email address separately rather than this blog. Thanks.
Ed, development environments ususually have a quite loose security concept, whereas production environments are hardened in many ways. It is just a guess, but when it comes to filesystem permissions, Windows and Linux OS are quite different. A few things you should check are:
- User-ID of the system User running the webserver. Even if the username (www, wwwadmin, etc.) is the same, the UID is different. *.tar.gz archives do recognize such things though. That leads to files and directories not being readable/writable on the production environment after a transfer from the dev. env.
- Ensure that you have enough disk space on the production system.
- BackUpWordPress uses PEAR libraries to do the zipping, as far as i recall. Check if you php.ini setup [via phpinfo()] or an other plugin doesn’t overload pear classes.
- look into the apache error logs for hits if you can get them.
Sometimes hosters offer their own plan for backups. So do not expect too much of a support if it is part of their business to sell backup plans.
good luck,
& all the best!
greate
Glad your are back and that April is going to keep your Backup plugin rolling along. I’ve spent the past hour trying to come up with an easy way to back up my sites and finally came across your plugin. Have loaded it and will give it a try now……thanks for the effort.
thx Rebecca for appreciating my work! I am still using the latest BackUpWordPress version I was maintaining and, with the current configuration on my webserver, I never ran into any problems so far. Nonetheless, many people do have troubles getting it to work properly so be careful when evaluation it’s use. Good luck!
I have been using it for almost a month but i don’t receive my backups in my email, i have activated that setting though. what am i missing?
Sammy, your backup probably exceeds attachemnt quotas. Also your hoster might not permit sending mail via mail(). Try to get in touch with April from springthistle (see original post above) to get advise. good luck!
Hello! Very quick question: What is the backup file path? Sorry for the newbie question, but I can’t get the backup running without typing in a path and I have no idea what to type in. I’ve looked at WordPress forums but can’t find the answer. Thanks so much!
Charlotte, the backup file path is a writable directory either relative to your WordPress installation or absolute as a system file path. The plugin tries to detect the path automatically as far as i recall. Have you tried to get in touch with April from springthistle (see original post)? She might be able to help you out as well…
Roland,
I loaded your back up program on one of my sites a few weeks ago. I set it up for email so I could back it up on my hard drive as well as the server just in case. I had need to use it and spent some time trying to figure out how to use the restore. Checked Google and came up empty but finally found how to do it. So simple it makes you blind. It is right within Dashboard in the tab marked…:) “BackUpWordPress”….go figure:) At any rate, one click and bam, I’m back to yesterday.
Needless to say, I’ve now loaded it onto all my other sites. Next check I get, I’ll buy the coffee.
Thanks Again
first of all accept my congratulations for this valuable tool you, my English is bad. but I hope to make people understand my words. I am very satisfied with the plugin, the worse it likely is not in the agenda backup automatically, was added a custom personalization to put time and / or times of copying, ie copying 4:00 am (04:00) or copy once a week, I do not know if they already do, until now only turns on and off, is just a suggestion, I am very satisfied with the results, Thanks
Hi, this is a very convenient plugin. Only one strange thing: I see many files in the backup have been doubled (with .1. added to the filename) or even trebled (with .2. as well) . These extra files are not to be found in the ftp environment and make the backup very large. Any idea what causes this?
bas, thanks for providing feedback! The problems you experience with file artifacts may be a result from an unfinished tar or gzip process. Note, BackUpWordPress never got out of the beta state, so don’t rely on it within production environments!
It might help to get your whole blog and database into a testing environment to see what causes the problem.
Hi
I’ve installed BackUpWordPress plugin on several websites and so far it works great (all sites on WP 3.1). You can find polish translation there: http://bandit.gr5/translations/pl_PL-BackUpWordPress.zip and bundle it into next version of this small but great plugin
.
Rafal, thanks for translating BackUpWordPress into polish! Please get in contact with April from springthistle to get it into the next release as she has been takin’ over BackUpWordPress development.
Aside from using it as a “safe” haven for my sites, I’m using as I build my sites now, doing manual back ups when I have things the way I want them, and restoring to previous versions when I get code changes screwed up as I often do. Fantastic plugin. Keep it up
Very good plugin. Keep it up
Hello,
just installed wordpress backup, and Im wondering if the “test schedule” feature provides a download link in the notification email?
My test notifications display the file’s location, but its not a link.
thanks
-V-
Hey -V-!
Quite frankly, I don’t know anymore
Unfortunately I do not have the time to develop WordPress plugins any further.
But if you need this feature, drop a not for April @ springthistle; she’s been takin’ over BackUpWordPress a while ago.
best, -R-
I have never felt compelled to leave a comment on a plug-in site before, but this plug-in caused me such major grief that I just feel that I have to warn others. Despite setting this plug-in to only keep a MAXIMUM of 3 backups, I discovered that it had generated 2941 backups in the less than a week it has been activated on my blog. Not did this absolutely destroy the performance of my blog, it also shot me way past my maximum allowed storage space from my host and will end up costing me extra money. Use with care and monitor this plug-in closely.
Hi Pete!
You have got one cool name
And thanks a lot for leaving your comment. And for being critical and sharing your experience. You might have noticed that BackUpWordPress never got out of the BETA state, and the troubles it caused you is part of the reasons why. While I myself use BackUpWordPress without any problems in 90% other users have reported quite a variety of problems. For instance: I once tried to run it under Windows (WAMP) on a testing environment. No luck I can tell you.
Whereas on Linux (LAMP) and Mac (MAMP) testing environments everything went fine afaik.
I cannot emphasis enough, and this applies to ALL software: Do not use BETA or even worse ALPHA releases on production sites. And be extra careful when it comes to security, where I consider backup tasks are part of.
Maybe you wnt to try out Daniel Hüsken’s BackWpUp. It has got an almost 5 star rating @ wordprtess.org.
all the best,
Roland
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. (Hellen Keller, American writer).
I would like to ask you how to limit numbers of backups. I used default setting and had 10 backups set.
But plugin made a lot of backups and now I have a problem with deleting them remotely – a lot of files have not permissions to delete
pawel, this feature is not implemented yet. You could ask April from springthistle to add it to the next release.
OK, thanks
Please, I can’t backup, i get errors liek this one Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 20 seconds exceeded in /home/users/electrox/pentagramranger.6f.sk/web/wp-content/plugins/backupwordpress/Archive/Reader/Directory.php on line 120
HELP!
Peter, if your installation contains a lot of files, BackUpWordPress might need more than 20 secs. to successfully complete. Look at your php.ini settings and increase max_execution_time if necessary.
Sorry, but where is a php.ini file? I can’t find it
must be somewhere at /etc/php/php.ini dependeing on your server’s OS. But you need root access to the machine…
Well, I don’t have root access, I’m on a free webhost
peter, please be aware of the fact that BackUpWordPress never got out of the beta state! you should be very careful when using it on a production site. BackUpWordPress also does use a lot of system tools, so if you have restricted priviledges on the webserver you are running it on you might run into further troubles. If your webservers max_execution_time is limited to 20 seconds and you have no way to change that, I’d suggest to look for a backup solution your provider might offer you.
installed the plugin wordpress back up, no problem but then it gave me back this error when trying to configure options?
Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: Permission denied in /home/finalroo/public_html/metal-roofing/wp-content/plugins/backupwordpress/bkpwp-classes/options.php on line 73
Any thoughts??
chris, as the warning stated, the webserver running your installation of wordpress does not have permissions to make a new directory in your wp-content folder. Use chmod or chown commands to allow the webserver to write into wp-content, but be very careful! Once the backup dir is made, it is owned by the webserver and backups can be written.
Hello Roland:
thanks, the current permissions on the wp-content folder are “755″ but what would you recommend changing them to that is not a security risk and still allows your plugin to do auto backups.
as soon the plugin made itself a directory “backup”, which then is owned by the user the webserver daemon is running as, you can change the permissions of the wp-content folder back to 644. the webserver will still be able to write into it’s backup directory.
Probably the best plugin ive found, keep up the good work. Thanks.
Hi
Please support backup of utf non-lating languages
Currently your SQL backup on my website shows mainly ???????????? marks
Thanks
Hi,
Today I’ve updated your plugin to 1.0.2 and after that All Backup settings/presets disappeared! (which where at the sidebar in WP admin area). And I couldn’t find where are the settings.
One more notice is that plugins author page is now: http://humanmade.co.uk/
Hi,
I got the same problem today after updating to version 1.0.3. The former menu in the sidebar disappeared, and a new subpoint called Backup in ‘Tools’ appeared. But it was not possible to make any adjustments or to change the preferences. It just makes an automated backup at 00:00 every day, that’s all.
A simplified version but not for the better.
I reinstalled the old plugin from a backup I made with it. Nice
!
I cannot recommend using the new version and would suggest to stay with the old one.
Greetings,
Alessandro
Hi,
I’ve had problems with the new 1.0.3 versions as Alessandro above. I re-installed the older version and although the backup of MySQL works fine – it now doesn’t do a ‘full’ backup of the site as it has done on previous wordpress sites. The backup it creates is 0 bytes in size. The logs show failed attempts to copy the site files.
Any ideas why this might be? Its a Unix hosting and I’m running version latest 3 of wordpress.
Cheers
Mark
Thanks Mark for reporting your problem. Unfortunately I haven’t looked into the code for such a long time. If you look at the comments above, there might some be helpful though. Btw: April from springthistle has taken over BackUpWordPRess development. Maybe she can help. best, Roland
Hello,
I got an answer from April, that she hasn’t started further development yet.
So I don’t know why Worpress is displaying an update for BavckUpWordPress that is actually for a totally different plugin.
I recommend to just ignore the update until further notice from April.
bye
Alessandro
Without checking it out first, I updated from the 0.4.5 version to the 1.03 on a couple of my sites. I still have the old version on other sites. How can I copy the old version from one site to another? Anyone? The old version is much better. Allows for email copies sent daily and the restore feature is excellent when building a site.
Becky
This is a great website, will you be interested in doing an interview regarding just how you developed it? If so e-mail me!
Hi,
I’ve had problems with the new 1.0.3 versions as Alessandro above. I re-installed the older version and although the backup of MySQL works fine – it now doesn’t do a ‘full’ backup of the site as it has done on previous wordpress sites. The backup it creates is 0 bytes in size. The logs show failed attempts to copy the site files.
Any ideas why this might be? Its a Unix hosting and I’m running version latest 3 of wordpress.
Hi I am using your File Icons plugin which is great but, I have some images that link to some pdfs which i don’t want the icon to appear next too is there a way that for certain things you can turn the icon off maybee a class ie class=”no_icon” any help much appreciated regards Alistair
Hi Fixed it by adding a class #content now only appears on content obviously thanks anyeay