Tried it with SQL v4.x compatibility and after the initial pass of table and content backup, it just sat fat-dumb-and-happy while trying to compress.

Joomla! Pack does what it claims. This is a new concept for backing up Joomla websites. I love it so much that I had made a Chinese translation for its language file.

Hope it can be better and better. Thank you Nicholas.

Excellent - works a treat

Worked first time for me, just what I needed to transfer the maintenance of some existing live sites to my local development web server.

Obviously had to change
$mosConfig_live_site = 'http://mydomain.com'
to
$mosConfig_live_site = 'http://localhost'
in restored local configuration.php

but otherwise everything just worked. Thanks a lot Nicholas.

First a little background:

I have GoDaddy hosting for one of my websites. I originally set up Joomla through their hostingmetropolis "value applications" feature because I figured it would be easier. Well apparently the MySQL database that they set up for you is not under your hosting but on a different server all-together. Unfortunately they only give you the joomla admin name and password and not the one to database. I wanted to install a component that required use of the same database as the joomla install. Needless to say, I was out of luck. I emailed GoDaddy's support and they told me that they couldn't help me because hostingmetropolis is who sets that up and not them. The kicker here is that hostingmetropolis IS GoDaddy! I emailed them back to ask them how I would go about fixing this problem and they told me to uninstall Joomla from hostingmetropolis and install it manually. So now I'm screwed. I have no access to the raw database because they can't/won't give me the password and I have a ton of content that I need to transfer over to a new Joomla installation that I'm going to manually create. Greaaaaat.

Fast forward to finding the Joomla! Pack...

I install it easy as apple pie, follow the instructions on how to backup my database/mambots/modules/etc. and how to restore them somewhere new. I can't tell you how smoothly this went. I was up and running again in about an hour flat. My only complaints, and they are but a few, as others have said, that whole username and password business when reinstalling (by accessing http://yoursite.com/installation/install.php) is useless. The new Joomla site uses the same exact database as the old one so your original joomla super admin username and passwords are the ones you want to use. I think it's a remnant of their variation of the installer that puts it there, so just keep that in mind and you're fine.

Second complaint, it does NOT keep your Site->Global Configuration settings. I had to go in and turn back on SEF URL's and a few other settings like linking titles of articles. Like I said, nothing major. Other than that, every single mambot, module, addon, doodad, etc were all in place exactly as I had them before.

If I could give this a star rating, it would be a 4 1/2 out of 5. Very minor grievances with an extremely satisfied result in what it does, and the best part about it? It's free. Thank you guys very much, you've saved me immensely. I would never have been able to get all my old data without this!

Sorry for the long review, but I really do endorse this product, it does exactly what it says it's going to do!

Everything went smoothly once I actually *read* the manual. (Hint: When restoring, browse to /installation rather than the Joomla root...) It is thorough and clear, but required reading before attempting a restore.

I needed to move/restore my site to another server and subdirectory, and share my notes for the benefit of those with similar needs:

If you use search friendly URLs (e.g. Artio JoomSEF or OpenSEF (not on extensions.joomla.org but http://projects.j-prosolution.com/projects/os-projects/project-opensef.html), remember to modify the RewriteBase directive in .htaccess.

It's obvious that /configuration.php must be modified, but there are quite a few settings to remember. Off the top of my head: $mosConfig_absolute_path,
$mosConfig_cachepath, $mosConfig_db, $mosConfig_host,
$mosConfig_live_site, $mosConfig_user, $mosConfig_password...

A global search/replace for /oldsubdir to /newsubdir can be useful to alter any absolute URLs in .htaccess, templates or css, provided /oldsubdir is a reasonably uncommon string. I used the freeware editor PSPad for this: Search > Search/replace in files. (Hardcoded absolute URLs in content require similar modification, but I don't know any quick way to do this globally.)

Even with new release backup hangs after 5 to 10%, and comes up with the screen that timeout occured and report the bug, I am not sure where to report the bug as author does not have place report the bugs. I am not sure how others able to backup the sites with this componet.

With multi-step (huge sites) selction backup does not even proceed.

I hope author fixes these problems to make great useful tool.

I installed it, then used it to pack and download. 50 megs was packed and downloaded in about 5 minutes.

I then uploaded to the new server in a test subdirectory and unpacked the compressed file via the control panel file manager. The upload took the usual 20 minutes. (A question: is secure technology available to do a straight old-server to new-server file transfer without using one's local desktop as an intermediate stopping point?)

I then pointed my browser to the installation subdirectory created during the unpack process. This runs the install program. I had a few password related problems.

Then I remembered that the new server used a different prefix ... old MySQL db was xxxx_site1 , new MySQL db was yyyy_site1. Old MySQL user was xxxx_admin, New MySQL user was yyyy_admin.

So I got around this by
1. Manually creating the new db 'site1' on the new site using the cpanel. This, of course, became db 'yyyy_site1' automatically on the new server.

2. Manually creating the user 'admin' on the new site, which got translated to 'yyyy_admin'. I gave it a password and wrote it down.

3. Manually adding the new user 'admin' to the new db 'site1', with full permissions, naturally.

Then I reran the install program with the MySQL user named 'admin' and the password I had written down.

I spent another few minutes checking out each page, and everything looked good at first glance. Two days later things still look fine.

Perhaps I took the long way, but, even with the few extra steps, it was very easy and fairly quick. My sincere thanks to the author and to those whose testing has refined the component.

What a great tool. In about 15 minutes, I had installed this on a Joomla site and MAMP on my MacBook Pro. Backed up the site and installed Joomla on my laptop. Site was perfectly replicated. Full marks!

I backed up a 120 MB Joomla website which is already up and running and tried to install it locally to test the component. I am running 1.0.12 and it worked PERFECTLY! This is THE component I was looking for... It effortlessly backs up sites, even the big ones.

Since there is no documentation available, I am posting an outline of the steps:
1] Install the component and backup your website. You can view the ftp path of your backup through this component.

2] Download/transfer the backup file to your desired location. This file must then be unzipped in the desired location.

3] Now, you might need to change some parameters. If your site has a huge database, you need to change the maximum execution time for a php script. Find the 'php.ini' file for your server (not sure where it will be), which is the file with the php settings for your server. For local testing, I had to restart the server but I'm not sure what you'd do for remote hosting. Anyway, the value for 'max_execution_time' in the 'php.ini' file should be increased to around 200 seconds for larger databases.

4] Now, point your browser to http:///install/
where the is the exact location of your unzipped files.

5] You will notice a joomla installation screen. Follow normal procedure, just make sure the name of the database is the same as that you had in the initial website. Change the database server in case there is already a database with that name in your server.

6] If you do not get past step 5, in the MySQL settings screen, try increasing the max execution time mentioned in step 4.

7] Make sure you use the same password for admin in the final screen,

8] Remove the installation folder.

9] Download via ftp, your configurations.php file for joomla. Change the '$mosConfig_live_site' to the path of your joomla installation.

Thats it! You have your entire site backed up!

Thanks a lot to this empowering component.

No problems installing or backing up the site! Great job and THANKS.

Some quick feature requests:
1. If there are multiple sites installed on the database, it would be nice to be able to select the tables that we would like to backup. Same with the files/folders.

Well, I tried the .3.3 version, and it ALWAYS got stuck on the first folder it tried to list the files for. It would never go farther no matter how long I waited.

I tried this latest version, but the backup button doesn't do anything. It doesn't start backup or anything.

Any ideas? If you need more info, I can provide it, but I can't get this to work at all. I REALLY hope that whatever my problem is can be fixed, whether it's on my end or the extension's end. Thanks for the plug.

Like other postings I was looking for a backup component that would backup data and site files all in one go. Unfortunately, every time I tried to run a backup of this component it just hung! If it is because I am using 1.0.12 Joomla, please can this component be updated as soon as possible. A complete backup solution like this component, would be perfect.

Pro: Easy easy install and config
Con: Never finishes backup, freezes every time. Really takes away from the usefulness of the com.

Owner's reply:
If you are experiencing problems - unlike most users out there - it's more appropriate to discuss them on the support forum, rather on a review site like this. After all, no software is without bugs and the only way to solve them is to get feedback from users like you.

I was looking for such a component a long time to

.) backup the database
.) backup the files

It works perfectly.
The option to restore a backup on another location is absolutely great and more than i expected.