Coming up next: JoomlaPack 2.1

It's almost a week since 2.0.1 was released, but we haven't been lying dormant. On the contrary, this has been a very productive week with major work having been carried out towards the next beta release of our component, JoomlaPack 2.1 Beta 1. The major highlights of this upcoming release are:

• Off-site directory inclusion. You can now backup directories above your site's root, provided that your server's open_basedir restrictions allow it. Many webmasters use directories above the site's root to store download repositories and such, therefore it's a handy feature to them :) The off-site directories are stored inside a new folder in the archive, one which does not already physically exist on your site.
• Extension filters. I've been planning this ever since 1.0, but the code base wasn't mature enough. With this filter you can completely exclude any installed component, module, plug-in, template or even language! This is the absolute step in creating customized sites by performing nothing more than a backup! Note: components' database tables are not automatically excluded because there is no technically sound way to determine which table is owned by which component.
• Front-end "Light Mode". With an increasing number of ultra-portable Internet-connected devices, ranging from Netbooks to PDA's to cellphones, it's desirable to be able to perform a site backup right from your palm, while on the move. In order to ensure this possibility, the "Light Mode" was invented. Using very plain pages (so users priced on data volume won't suffer) and front-end access, authenticating by means of the "secret word", the light mode enables you to backup your site anywhere, anytime, even while commuting to work or attending that boring meeting!
• Tar and tar.gz support. The popular uncompressed tar format is based on a modified version of PEAR's Archive_Tar library. The optional gzip compression is realized using your operating system's gzip binary; doing this inside PHP has proved to be an awfully bad idea in the past (remember memory outages on JoomlaPack 1.0.x?)
• Integrated news reader. We know we release a new version every now and then and that makes it hard for you to keep up. Since the "old" system of updates querying had the potential to cause insane amounts of traffic to our website (therefore it was eradicated in 2.0), we decided to implement a different idea. The new version fetches, caches and displays JoomlaPack's latest headlines through RSS, using the trusted Joomla! newsfeed syndication technology. So, no more remembering to visit JoomlaPack.net, the component's Control Panel does it for you ;)
• Tons of bug fixes. It's bug hunting season and we came back from our "bug safari" with quite a few trophies! Fallen pray to our hunting skills: a dozen or so sources of PHP notices, JPI3 displaying odd behaviour with multiple database restoration pages, a broken email feature, undesired behaviour of quotas, erratic handling of cache and temporary directories and some few other minor bugs.

Now it's minor tweaking and QA time, so expect a formal beta 1 release somewhere around New Year. It'll be our present to you for the holiday season ;)

Of course, we're still working on other stuff as well, including our Native Tools. But that's the topic of another post, in due time!