Support

Sorry for the late reply. It looks like Dale had to be away from his computer and I had at to deliver a project by Monday; a bad combination causing both support members to be absent at the same time.

The easiest way to figure out your JoomlaPack version is going to the components administration and taking a look at the com_joomlapack version.

Anyway, if all alse fails, there is the guaranteed-to-work emergency manual restoration method. However, I must give you two important warnings:

1. You MUST download the backup file using FTP in BINARY mode, unless you are taking a backup from a local server. Same goes if you want to upload the backup archive to a live server in order to use Kickstart; you have to use FTP in BINARY mode. If you don't, the archive could get corrupt in transfer, leading to an incomplete site restoration.

2. If you proceed with the manual restoration procedure, you MUST extract the archive either with Kickstart running on a local host, or eXtract (part of our Native Tools) on a Windows PC. The reason is that due to some constraints in PHP, JoomlaPack generated ZIP files might not be correctly extracted by third part archivers, such as Windows Compressed Folder, 7-zip, WinRAR or WinZIP. It's better to be on the safe side, right?

Finally, if you still get the 404 errors, but the backend works correctly, you might want to check your menu items, especially the one marked as a home page. It is a long shot, but if you have hand-coded an absolute URL in there, pointing to your dev site, it is possible that your site's front-page won't display. In this case you just have to edit the menu item.

Again, I replied very late. Sorry, this last week was too busy.

Well, as I said, since you still have your backup file, first try to extract it using eXtract. eXtract is a Windows GUI application which is bundled with our Native Tools package. You can use it to extract the backup file locally. The backup file contains your site files, the JPI3 or JPI4 installer in the installation directory and your database dump in installation/sql/joomla.sql.

If you follow the instructions of the Manual Restoration I pointed you to, you can perform a perfect restoration of your site.

If you try doing this and get stuck somewhere, just post back so that we can help you. I can't predict if and where you'll get stuck along the way, so I can't provide any more specific information which could help you.

So, start with the Manual Restoration instructions and post your progresss here :)

Normally you should be able to extract the contents of akb_contents from the source site/backup file, but this implies that you have the same sections and categories on the new site, as well as NOT having written ANY articles (incl. uncategorized content) in your new site.

If any of those pre-requisites is not met, you might have better chance either copy-pasting the articles, or using Joomla!'s Blogger XML-RPC API plugin and a software like Windows Live Writer to transfer the articles among the sites. It's not a very easy process, mind you.

There is also the Joomla! Export Content Component. I have not tried it myself, so your mileage may vary.

Do note that both of the previous alternatives require you to restore the backup file on a local testing server (e.g. XAMPP, Wampserver, Uniform Server, etc) to provide an environment for the required plug-ins / components to operate.