The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

This is the first component I install on every Joomla! website I create.

Nicholas is a great developer and supporter!

I backupd my website every day with this great component. Yes, I can sleep peacefully! ;-)

I use this extension for every site. It is essential if you ever move a site to another server. The capability -- new -- to backup sites remotely from any client and save the backup remotely anywhere is extremely convenient. I encountered a very obscure issue with windows task scheduler and received prompt, thorough, and accurate support assistance from Nicholas. Virtually alone among free extensions (not to mention paid ones) the documentation is phenomenal. Extremely thorough, detailed, and precise, with many examples. Not only that, even within the extension there are many links to the documentation, precisely at the point whjere your question arises. And although I recognize that the Joomla communittis very diverse and international, nonetheless it is very helpful for me personally to be able to converse with a developer whose English is perfect, especially as my Greek is non-existent!

I cannot recommend this extension highly enough.

If you just installed Joomla, this is the first extension to download. Absolutely essential. After that, install Akeeba Admin.

Thanks for a truly worthwhile extension

I have been used Akeeba for 3 years now...and you know how many problems did I have with Akeeba??? NONE...works perfectly, smoothly and easy. Great for localhost work and after going live in minutes...THANKS FOR THIS GREAT EXTENTION!!! IMHO think is just one of the best Joomla! components ever!!

It works perfectly fine, a must have.
You can configure whether .zip or .jpa (own archive system).

I would have needed it before my website crash though ^^

Thanks for this extension.

This extension is Great free extension!!
Seven stars for this.
It's not only for backing up a website from online server to local computer server, but it's work also the other way around. I used to work and complete a website on my local computer first, before transferring it manually to online server trough ftp, it's took times and sometimes error happen resulted in fail. but when I got this extension no more problem :) is so easy, fast and no more error.
Thanks to Akkeba Team for this free extension...

One of the most utilitarian components ever!
I use it one every site that runs on Joomla! and it has ever failed me. Recently, I downloaded the latest version and was surprised of the new features.
Great Work!

I won't build a site without it. Simply one of the best tools available for Joomla! Intuitive, proactive and extremely useful. Install it today!

It is perfectly easy to use and well designed. I use it very often before any plugin installations and until now I did no need to restore - let's hope this will be true in the future :)

Perfect and a must have. We use it for all our sites. Two thumbs up.

I may have already reviewed this ... but it's worth a note that, combined with Admin Tools, this makes upgrading from Joomla 1.6.x to 1.7 totally painless. The whole process (including a before/after backup) took less than 10 minutes .. with absolutely no issues.

This has to be welcome news for all of us that are all too familiar with the Joomla upgrade "dance".

Congratulations to the Akeeba team .. they deserve Joomla Oscars!

Just moved a 1.5.17 (don't ask) to 1.7 on a different host with minimal effort, using this software. Thank you!

First you have to read a lot of documentation to understand the concept. But once installed, you can make a backup with one click. And with 'kickstart', restoring your system is almost as easy as to backup it. Just at the beginning of building a website for a NGO, I had to use Akeeba a number of times. And it has always functioned properly.

This extensions is really great, it's not even funny.

The installation was simple, the set-up is easy as well given all the explanation, tool tip an guides. Sure there are many settings as you would expect from a professional extensions. But not too many that you are discouraged looking at the config page.

The restoration process is a breeze! so simple.

It's definitely worth getting the pro version. I used to always go for free extensions. But what you get for such small price is no doubt valuable. And when you think about it, just factor the cost in your next project(s), and basically, your extension will be paid for by clients, and will benefits you for all sites.
And since time is money, you will save a lot of money with this extension. A very good ROI is you ask me.
Let alone providing additional service to your client by providing them with peace of mind knowing that their entire site is backed up frequently and ready to be restored very quickly.

Great work Akeeba team !

This extension has given us a feeling of control over our website back-ups. Who knows if the host really does them or if they will work when there is a problem. Thanks Akeeba!

Have always wondered whether Joomla backups of data and database worked as a user never knows until it is too late if it doesn't. On an earlier occasion this has happened for me.
However, this one does work and very well too.
Using this package I backed up my 7 year old online site, ftp'd the file to a PC running Windows Vista and Wampserver 2.0 and after using Kickstart (the other neccesary part to this package) was able to have a localhost perfect working copy. Now convinced that any backup would work in the future, and am breathing sighs of relief. All work completed in a very short time span and at no cost. Nicholas deserves the praise given by many users for this work. Many Thanks.

I've been using Akeeba/JoomlaPack since the beginning and I have to say that I am regularly impressed with the features and ideas Nicholas comes up with. Being a developer myself, I can say that the code in all Akeeba products are solid and Nicholas is top notch.

Akeeba backup is a must have for all Joomla websites. In fact, it's one of a few that live on every website I build.

Thank you Nicholas, Dale and others for all of your hard work. You provide a service to the Joomla Community that is hard to match.

The process of migrating Joomla! from one server to another is relative simple, however it always takes some time. This extensions is an excellent way to save time and effort. Do you want to make a copy of any Joomla! site to your localhost to do some tests? No problem! Do you want to backup you entire site (files and database)? No problem either :)The idea behind an autoinstaller is really great, and the overall quality of extension is impressive. Just a must-have.

Spare a lot of job, simple to use!
The free version knows everything what is important except cron.
It is extraordinary helpful for me, much thanks!!!

Joseph

I'm currently in the process of migrating a website from J1.5 to J1.7. Since this website is hosted on a virtual server, which allows me to take and reload snapshots very easily, I didn't feel like I needed a product bound backup system. Instead, if anything went wrong, I could always restore the whole machine within seconds.

After having read that the migration process could be somewhat tricky, I decided to simulate the whole work on my local machine first. Then, if it's clear that it can be done and once I know the pitfalls, I'm going to redo the work on the server.

So this is, what I initially used the component for:

1) Creating a backup of a certain website
2) Restoring the website on my local working machine

The installation succeeded without any problems.

The resulting page gave a nice overview of what had been installed (the component, a module and three plugins). Unfortunately, there was no explanation of the purpose of the different plugins (at least not on this page, maybe in documentation). Not a big thing of course, but I preferred to know.

The page went on to give hints to the documentation and the forums, and explained what to do next:

1) configure the component
2) define inclusion/ exclusion filters to define which files to backup
3) creating the first backup

I did what I was told and clicked on the link to the configuration page (link on "successfully-installed-page"). There I got the first warning, which told me that my server was not capable to crypt the settings, and that I was advised not to store any passwords. Since I know better (my server does support crypting!), but it wasn't clear to me if this was probably a "professional only" feature of akeeba backup, I started to search for answers.

Google didn't provide any and support for the component isn't for free. So I decided not to ask, but to take a look at the source. It revealed, that the component does some checks for existing scripts, settings and php functions. Since the scripts and functions are available on my server, it was most likely a missing component setting.

And in fact: After I reviewed the settings and clicked "Save", a post installation wizard showed up. It asked me some questions about which features I liked to use (system restore points, update notifications and a configuration assistant). While I'm not a friend of update notifications, the configuration assistant looked promising. It did some checks for folders and permissions, as well as timeout settings and other stuff. When it finished, I was once more presented a website which let me choose between reviewing settings and doing a backup. This time when I entered the settings, a friendly, greenish message told me, that my settings could be crypted and that it was secure to save passwords (well, as secure as it can be, you know...)

So in the end, the trouble with the encryption capabilities was only due to the fact, that the link on the "successfully-installed-page" skipped the post installation wizard. No problem once you are aware of it.

Most remaining settings were quite self-explanatory, most (if not all of them) provide pop-ups with additional information and examples how to use them.

When selecting a folder for the backups, I really liked to place them somewhere outside my web root. I simply don't like the idea of backups of the site being part of the site themselves (default for backups is [joomla]/administrator/components/com_akeeba/backups/[backup_file]). At least, akeeba is smart enough not to backup existing backups when creating new ones.
However, for some reason it was not possible to define a folder for the backups somewhere outside the webroot. I guess this is related to joomla's FTP-layer, which I have enabled. My website uses an FTP-account, which has its root folder set to the folder of the joomla site. If akeeba relies on this method of file system access, this would explain, why it can't access folders outside this location (it reports they wouldn't exist). It does not explain, why they are shown in the folder selection dialog (I mean: it is kinda pointless to provide locations that can't be used anyways...). It also doesn't explain, why the backup files are created by the user under which apache runs, instead of using the FTP-account. This looks a bit inconsistent to me, but is again only a flaw, not a serious issue. After all, the backups will be created, without trouble, inaccessible to the outside world (.htaccess cares for denying access to the files, even if one could guess the file name).

After creating the backup, I downloaded the .jpa file and restored it on my local machine using "akeeba kickstart". I came across some problems that where related to different PHP versions and error reporting settings, but those are explained in akeeba's documentation, which is quite detailed. Thumbs up for it.

The process included creation of a new database and provided the possibility to reset the password for one super user. You can decide if you want to use the FTP-layer, ... All together very similar to the installation process of joomla itself or other web based installers. Nothing to complain about it.

So after the installation and configuration of akeeba raising some questions, restoring the backup was a breeze. Within a minute, I had a perfect clone of my website running on my local machine. Beautiful! Good Work!

Well, I had to adjust some settings like SEO, mod_rewrite and the like, but maybe that's out of scope for a backup solution. At least, I don't expect akeeba for handling such things.

At this point, I was quite impressed. The product was well documented, wizards helped finding correct settings, every step provided good feedback, even the code which I looked at was well structured and documented. And akeeba allowed me to clone my website within no time, allowing me to do simulate the migration without touching my running site.

The problems I came across so far hadn't been severe, so I was quite confident.

The first step of my migration was to remove components, that were installed, but never used. Reducing work during actual migration.

Sadly, many components concentrate on the installation process only, and leave some garbage in your joomla installation after you uninstalled them. So it's quite common, that you need to drop DB tables yourself or end up manually removing some folders here and there. One component I uninstalled tried to delete the files it installed (at least!), but had a bug in its uninstall routine. It tried to change to one of its directories, then to delete all the files in there. To make a long story short: The chdir failed, the component didn't check the success of the operation and instead of deleting its own files, it deleted all the files in [joomla]/administrator. Goodby backend.

So why do I write this down? Not a problem related to akeeba, is it? Not really, but wouldn't it be nice if it was? ;)

Akeeba provides a feature called "system restore points". It hooks into the joomla installer, and whenever you install anything, it creates a backup first. So if the installation process fails, you can always restore to the point before installation. Great idea, isn't it?

If such "system restore points" would also be provided for uninstall operations, akeeba could even protect you from deinstallaion problems (maybe not from this special one - without a backend, well... hard one). I think such a feature would be important, because in my experience, uninstalling will much more likely cause trouble than installing something.

So why do I only rate the component as "average"?

It's not due to the minor inconveniences when setting it up. It's also not some additional features I feel it could provide. At this point I would still rate it as good, maybe even as excellent.

But when I upgraded one other component, things went totally wrong. Akeeba created the system restore point, which made me feel safe. The component upgrade failed, my gallery was broken. "Not a problem any more" I thought, tried to restore to the point before the upgrade, akeeba provides me with a success message, but my gallery is still broken...

I didn't yet investigate what exactly happened, what data is saved with the restore points and why the backup didn't work. But I'm very happy, that I simulated everything locally and didn't screw up the gallery on my server!

Creating backups and restoring them properly is the single most important use case for a backup solution. Leaving me with a broken system after "successfully" restoring a "system restore point" is probably the worst scenario that could have happened.

I still rate "average", because of the good feedback of the component, because cloning my site worked very well and thus saved me a lot of work, and because akeeba's documentation is reputable enough to advises you to test backups before relying on them. This is maybe the most important advice one can give you: Security doesn't come with the installation of a backup system, but only with verifying that it actually works. That it does not only create backups, but that it can also properly restore them!

Thanks for reading this lengthy review till the final end. ;)