Support

Both of your questions are answered in the documentation. If you have a specific question which is not answered by it, please let me know. The way your ticket is phrased it tells me you went through the text in the Schedule Automatic Backups page but didn't click the link to the (much more detailed) documentation.

Why the front-end backup URL fails from a web browser:

• It is not designed to be run from a normal web browser, but from an unattended cron script, utilizing wget or cron as a means of accessing the function.

• Normal web browsers tend to be "impatient". If a web page returns a bunch of redirection headers, the web browser thinks that the web server has had some sort of malfunction and stop loading the page. It will also show some kind of "destination unreachable" message. Remember, these browsers are meant to be used on web pages which are supposed to show some content to a human. This behaviour is normal. Most browsers will quit after they encounter the twentieth page redirect response, which is bound to happen. Please do not report that Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Opera or another browser doesn't work with the front-end backup feature. It was NOT meant to work by design.

How to set up the backup using webcron.org:

Using webcron.org to automate your backups

Assuming that you have already bought some credits on webcron.org, here's how to automate your backup using their service.

First, go to Akeeba Solo's main page and click on the System Configuration button. Find the option titled Enable front-end and remote backup and set it to Yes. Below it, you will find the option named Secret key. Type in a secret key. We strongly recommend using only alphanumeric characters, i.e. 0-9, a-z and A-Z. For the sake of this example, we will assume that you have entered ak33b4s3cRet in that field. We will also assume that your site is accessible through the URL http://www.example.com.

Log in to webcron.org. In the CRON area, click on the New Cron button. Here's what you have to enter at webcron.org's interface:

• Name of cronjob: anything you like, e.g. "Backup www.example.com"

• Timeout: 180sec; if the backup doesn't complete, increase it. Most sites will work with a setting of 180 or 600 here. If you have a very big site which takes more than 5 minutes to back itself up, you might consider using the native CRON script (backup.php) instead, as it's much more cost-effective.

• Url you want to execute: http://www.example.com/index.php?view=remote&key=ak33b4s3cRet

  (for Akeeba Backup for WordPress replace index.php?view=remote with /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=akeebabackup_legacy)

• Login and Password: Leave them blank, unless you have enabled password protection by .htaccess for your Akeeba Solo installation. In this case you will need to supply this common username and password in these fields.

• Execution time (the grid below the other settings): Select when you want your CRON job to run

• Alerts: If you have already set up alert methods in webcron.org's interface, we recommend choosing an alert method here and not checking the "Only on error" so that you always get a notification when the backup CRON job runs.

Now click on Submit and you're all set up!

Remember, the execution time you select must be enough for your site's backup to run to completion. If your backup takes 10 minutes (600 seconds) to complete and you have set a WebCRON timeout of 180 seconds it will fail, showing you the last HTTP status which is of course HTTP 303 See Other since the frontend backup runs by issuing HTTP redirections.