Support

 In my ticket #25345 (closed so I can't reply there), I indicated that I was now restoring a website into a different folder, and you said that is too tricky and a waste of time.

But I'm currently developing 7 different joomla sites, and they simply can't all be root.

Can you please point me to the documentation on how I would attempt this, even if it's tricky? If I can't backup and restore to folders that seriously limits Akeeba's usefulness to me as a site developer.

Many thanks,
Les...

Les,

The trick is that all of the sites need to be in "sibling" folders, not "parent/child". What I mean is that the folders all need to be subfolders of public_html (or whatever your root folder is named). If you have a live site and the dev sites are subfolders of that, it gets really messy. The dev sites inherit the .htaccess of the live site and they would also inherit the Admin Tools WAF protection of the live site, to the point where they won't work. You also have problems in that the files of all the dev sites are included in the live site's backup and have to be manually excluded. Like I said, messy.

So, to do it you need for your public_html to be empty except for the folders holding your dev sites.

Thanks Dale, that's helpful. Can you help me understand if you are saying the issue is with Akeeba working with Joomla installs in subfolders, or if the issue is simply with Joomla installs themselves working in subfolders?

I've been doing this for years, and have had no issues with either. I have my main business website running in the root of public_html, and then all my development sites for clients running in folders under a Clients folder below that root public_html folder.

If the issue is with Joomla itself, I'm curious why it happens to work without issue for me, with a mix of Joomla versions including the very latest.
If the issue is just with Akeeba restores, I'll need to rethink my planning as I have clients where their site runs in subfolders and where that is beyond my control.

For my immediate need, I still have a site that was backed up with Akeeba 5.0.4, the running site was then corrupted, and now I need to restore that backup somewhere new. When I unpack it with kickstart, delete those two bad files, and then continue with the Angie install, it fails. Are there any workarounds to get that backup back, or am I doomed for having used 5.0.4 at all?

Thanks again!
Les...

Joomla! generally works fine in a subfolder. In cases where it doesn't, you get strange formatting on the home page and none of the links work. When that happens you need to manually enter the URL in the $live_site variable in configuration.php. And in some cases, you need to change the RewriteBase in .htaccess if the home page displays but the links don't work.

There are several problems when one site is in a subfolder of another. The sub site inherits .htaccess and WAF protections of the "parent" site and generally wont load at all. Also, the files of the sub site will be backed up with the parent site unless specifically excluded. This causes problems with a restore, the files of the sub site are restored with the parent.

It is really hard to describe, the folders need to be parallel, not vertical. And that makes no sense unless you already know what I'm talking about. :-(

The restore is a separate issue. If you have deleted the two extra files, it is not a 5.0.4 problem. Those two files were the problem in the 5.0.4 restore. They caused the restore to hang with a "updating .htaccess" message. They also caused several references to WordPress during the restore.

Hi Dale,

I do understand the distinctions you are making re: vertical vs parallel folders, and also the inheritance issues with .htaccess.
Since I'd not had any issues in the past, I was looking for some guidance if the issue is more about Akeeba or Joomla.
I appreciate the time you took to provide some detail in your response.

So I've set up a new domain, will put a simple html file at the root, and will over time do all my dev work in a parallel set of horizontal subfolders. This seems wise to mitigate against future issues and wastes of time. Your response convinced to get this started.

Now to my immediate issue about the un-restorable backup, I'll try it on my fresh new domain and see if I have better luck. Should be able to report back shortly.

Les...

I was able to successfully restore that 5.0.4 backup to a new domain subfolder (with no .htaccess directives in any higher level folders).
Thanks for your help.
This ticket can now be closed.

You're welcome!