It's the final countdown!

After 6 months in development, countless hours of testing by JoomlaPack Developers, JATS and regular users, fixing a pile of bugs, one alpha and one beta release, we are finally ready to release JoomlaPack 2.0 Stable. So, spread the word around...

JoomlaPack 2.0 Stable
Global Launch
Sunday, December 7th, 2008 - Noon, UTC

Our site will be down for 2-3 days for maintenance and a necessary face-lift. It will be back on-line at the official launch date and time. Meanwhile, let me give you the highlights of this release...

Coded around the Joomla! 1.5 API, the JoomlaPack 2.0 component delivers a high-profile backup solution for your site, while remaining Free, both as in "freedom" and as in "zero price". More powerfull than ever before and compatible with a wide assortment of server setups, it's designed to protect your valuable site. With exciting new features, like live full site or database only restoration and multiple database-only backup, it makes backing up your site a child's play. Our thorough documentation will guide you through and - should the need arise - our stellar support team is always willing to lend a hand, right now and for free!

We wanted to push the PHP site backup technology to its limits ever since the first release, more than two years ago. So, as you readers of this blog already know, we decided to take site backup... to your desktop! AFAIK, nobody attempted this before, but we did. Full fledged multiple site backups running in parallel, right from your desktop, thanks to JoomlaPack and a hefty XML-RPC plugin. The whole thing is called JoomlaPack Remote and will be shipped with this release.

As far as the backup archive extraction is concerned, we've got the traditional command-line suite of utilities called the JPA Utilities (JPAUtils) or, a new addition to the webmaster's arsenal, the vastly improved JoomlaPack eXtract graphical wizard for Windows and all x86 systems running WINE. It's click, click, backup archive is now extracted, thank you very much ;)

Our versatile web-based ZIP and JPA archive extraction tool, Kickstart, is even more powerful and smart. It can write files to your site using the traditional PHP direct file access mode, or the new FTP mode for maximum compatibility with common shared hosts setups. Using the FTP mode, it can automatically work around permission and ownership problems ("ownership hell") which would otherwise give you, the webmaster, a tough challenge trying to restore or upgrade your site.

The default embedded installer is now the JoomlaPack Installer 3 (JPI3), based on the Joomla! 1.5 installer, improved under the hood. It even supports the "auto mode" which - in conjunction with Kickstart - allows for fast two-click site restoration/migration for advanced web professionals.

Welcome to the future of Joomla! site backup.