That's part of the WordPress issue I described in our article.
Normally, WordPress does something really stupid when updating a plugin: it deletes the plugin's folder, then replaces it with the new version. Anything stored in the plugin's folder is removed during the upgrade.
To avoid that, we use a WordPress filter (a special kind of hook) to tell WordPress to NOT do that, but instead simply extract the new version's ZIP file in the plugin folder. Since WordPress introduced an issue which is crashing the hook handler it appears that this instruction does not make it, therefore WordPress falls back to its usual stupid self, removing the entire plugin folder.
This also explains some of the issues people had upgrading from 7.9.2 directly to 8.0.0.2. I managed to reproduce exactly that just two hours ago.
Which brings me to what I was saying in the article: WordPress' plugin updater cannot be trusted. Even worse, it is actively dangerous. Deleting the software's folder on update is something that no updater written by anyone moderately sane with at least two working brain cells would ever do! Automatic loss of data by default is immensely stupid. And yet, that is exactly how WordPress works!
By deleting the plugin folder it also removes the settings encryption key, which means that your backup profiles' configuration is lost.
This means that I have to remove the integration with WordPress plugin updater, you will only be able to update the plugin with our (far more reliable) updater inside the plugin itself, and the next version will be a manual update, with specific instructions on how to do it.
For now, the best you can do, is restore the site from a backup, or at least the wp-content/plugins/akeebabackupwp folder and all the wp_ak_* tables.
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
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