2.4 Beta 1

15 October 2009 Last updated on 16 January 2012

JoomlaPack 2.4 Beta 1 just released.

JoomlaPack Developers is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the new 2.4 Beta 1 formal release of our accredited Joomla! site backup component. This release coincides with the third anniversary of this project! On October 15th, 2006, JoomlaPack performed its first backup, on a Joomla! 1.0.11 site running on a local testing server. A few weeks later 1.0 was released and... the rest is the history we are writing, thanks to you!

This release addresses stability problems experienced by some of our users, especially those on shared hosts. You can always download it following the links on our Downloads page. If you have any problems, suggestions, wishes or want to contact the team members, you can drop by our support forum.

If you find this software useful, please consider donating a small amount using the donation buttons found on the left hand column of this site and on the component's Control Panel page. This gives us the incentive to keep on coding great software and keeping it Free, both as in speech and as in beer!

We need your help

Help us help you, by submitting cool new ideas in our support forum. There is a dedicated section for feature requests. Ask for anything, even if you think it's nonsensical, ridiculous or not very useful. Remember that three years ago a reliable Joomla! backup solution written entirely in PHP, without requiring exec() privileges and able to work on slow servers was ludicrous. Then, JoomlaPack happened. Throw ideas around. We hear you and we try to implement them. You power Open Source, you power JoomlaPack!

Change log

The following is a list of changes since the last official release, 2.4.b1.

New features

  • Shielding from non-AJAX content, reduces backup halts due to "AJAX error" on systems with too verbose PHP error reporting levels
  • CRON Helper Script resilience to misbehaving system plugins
  • Administer Backup Files page: Comments / description editing
  • Backup warnings are now shown on the backup progress pane in addition to being logged
  • MySQL VIEWs support in mysqldump database engine
  • JPI4 Automation through jpi4automation.ini
  • Kickstart complementary 0-click auto mode through jpi4automation.ini for restoration of JPI4-based backup files. Please read the documentation!
  • Extended usage of [ROOTPARENT] to off-site inclusion filters

Bug fixes

  • The (S)AJAX library now natively supports Joomla! page parameter fetches, eliminating some rare incompatibilities with the AJAX mode
  • Improved handling of empty root (avoids leading double slash)
  • POST data to the error page, instead of passing them as GET parameters, eliminating certain misleading HTTP 403 errors
  • Display JP admin module only to authorized users
  • Forcibly add the trailing DS to the site's root (unless it's empty) in order to work around open_basedir restrictions.
  • Tables referenced in views did not have their referenced table names abstracted, causing restoration errors
  • HTML formatting of comments was not retained in AJAX backup mode
  • Prefix handling resulted in invalid table names (e.g. prefix is ps_, table ps_core_acl_groups_aro_map turned into akb_core_acl_grouakb_aro_map instead of akb_core_acl_groups_aro_map)
  • Empty comments could cause a PHP Warning to be displayed
  • Download links contained double slashes, causing problems under some server setups
  • Warnings thrown by Smart filesystem scanner on unreadable directories
  • The AJAX mode code would constantly generate CUBE race conditions when updating the GUI status display
  • JPI4: Super Administrator password change wasn't getting applied
  • JPI4: Two instances of JPOutput were called by value, causing restoration problems in PHP4
  • JPI4: parse_ini_file could fail on older PHP versions when parsing databases.ini
  • JPI4: use of relative paths could lead to problems when opening settings INI files, e.g. databases.ini

Miscellaneous changes

  • Added Romanian translation
  • Updated German translation
  • Updated Greek translation

On behalf of the JoomlaPack Project,

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Project Leader