What you don’t see matters the most

Whereas it’s true that most JoomlaPack features are exposed by means of its graphical user interface, its the most important aspect is the backup core engine. What matters the most is having reliable backups every time, under any circumstances. This is what the backup core engine (CUBE) does and that’s why I had to improve it for the upcoming JoomlaPack 2.2.

Up until now, certain bottlenecks in the file packing code made it virtually impossible to use JoomlaPack on big sites running on slow servers. The reason was really simple. JoomlaPack had to scan all contained files and folders of a given folder in one go. If this operation took long enough (on slow servers it did), it would crash due to time outs. Same goes with packing big files. If many smaller files had been archived before hitting the big file, a timeout may had occurred.

Up until now we had to work around these limitations with certain fuzzy procedures, such as fiddling with Magic Numbers and changing to the Slow algorithm. The effect was that fewer operations would happen in a single step, reducing (but not always eliminating) the possibility of a time out occurring. Of course, this was a half-baked attempt to circumvent the problem, rather than solving it.

JoomlaPack 2.2.b1 will include my fixes to these problems. JoomlaPack is now smart enough to detect if a long file operation might cause a timeout, stop it, roll back and execute it in a new step, having the maximum amount of execution time available. There is also an improved filesystem scanner engine which detects large directories and forces their scanning to occur inside a single new step, to avoid timeouts.

The benefit of this approach is that JoomlaPack will now be able to work on sites where it wouldn’t work out-of-the-box and it will be substantially faster on sites where workarounds had to be implemented. For example, my own site required the Balanced settings in order to be possible to back it up. The backup took 15 minutes to complete. Now it works with the Optimistic settings and backs up in under 3 minutes! Wow!

Moreover, some servers couldn’t handle the amount of information required to be stored for large sites in the database between subsequent steps and crashed with a database error. I have included an option to force storage of temporary data in files instead of in database. This is required if you have directories deep down the fileystem hierarchy, containing more than 100-200 files.

Finally, there is a new feature you’re gonna love: Live Update. That’s right, JoomlaPack can detect if there is a new version released, notify you and install it with a single click. Please note that this feature requires that your server can draw data from other Internet sites. If RSS syndication with other sites works for you (i.e. you can display other sites’ RSS feeds in Joomla!) then Live Update will probably work as well. Also note that on servers where JoomlaPack’s “alternate installation” is required the single click update will fail. This is a limitation of the server.

The Earth Hour 2009

With only half an hour before 20:30 local time in Greece, I am turning off the lights on my house. Don't know what I'm talking about? It's this year's Earth Hour. We just turn off all the lights for an hour, 20:30 to 21:30 local time, wherever we are on the planet. It's the least we can do for the planet we live in.

Being a person who cares, I've decided to participate. For this hour I am turning off all lights, my PC (which consumes more electricity than a light bulb), light up some candles and enjoy the atmosphere. If I get a sudden Internet connectivity craving, there's always my EeePC. With less than 20W of power consumption, it's the most eco-friendly device I own :)

So, did you turn off your lights today?

Still on the free side

In my last blog post I shared my thoughts with you about having two versions of JoomlaPack, one paid and one for free. Well, 2.1 Stable is released and – as you noticed – it remains free of charge.

There was a number of factors which led me to this decision. The most important of which was the sentimental factor. I began creating JoomlaPack as a small personal project in order to help me accomplish a task I had at hand. I released it under the GPL in hope that other people would find it useful. The rest is history…

I simply found out that the spirit of JoomlaPack commanded that it should remain Free, both as in “free speech” and as in “free beer”. It is my personal attempt to prove that Free software doesn’t have to be an ugly, cryptic, undocumented and unsupported piece of code, meant only for the privileged elite of “hackers” and “geeks”. JoomlaPack was designed with the user in mind, right from the start.

But, let’s face it, the developer, yours truly, does have the need to make a living. Let alone the need to finance this expensive hobby: developing, writing documentation, supporting, improve the web infrastructure of this project does cost money and time. That’s why I decided to keep accepting donations and added advertisements on JoomlaPack.net. I sincerely hope that you’ll keep on donating . This is what keeps this project both Free and “for free”.

As a side note, I’d like to point out that both the “Free Edition” and the “Special Edition” are fully functional and distributed without any charge. You should think of their names as in “free from unnecessary features” and “made for sites and people with special interests in mind”. I know, this isn’t probably the most thought out or correct marketing approach, but you know me… I am just a code monkey, not an advertising agency :)

Free of charge, unless you want to pay for it

I have been considering a way to make a little money out of JoomlaPack. The donations are not very disappointing, but let’s face it: donations can only go that far. On the other hand, I detest proprietary (closed-source) software. Moreover, I believe that users should be able to pay in order to use a software only if they choose to do so. So, how do you combine Free (as in speech and as in beer) with Commercial?

To this end, beginning with the JoomlaPack 2.1 Stable release scheduled for mid-March, there will be two versions of the JoomlaPack component and JoomlaPack Remote: the Free version and the Special Edition version. Both versions will be 100% Open Source software (licensed under the GPL, so you can download their source code for free, anytime) and you can use them on an infinite number of sites for an unlimited period of time. Their main difference is that the advanced stuff (like multiple database backup, multiple backup profiles and extension filters) will only be available to the Special Edition version. You’ll gain 1 year access to Special Edition downloads by donating 20 Euros to the project.

So, your options for using JoomlaPack will be:

1. Don’t pay a dime; use the Free version. About 90% of users won’t need anything more than that in order to backup, restore or move their site between hosts.
2. Evaluate Special Edition for free. Why pay for something you can’t get to use beforehand? Our “Free Ride” plan gives you time-limited (24 hours) access to the full Special Edition downloads. You can keep the software after this period expires and use it legally on an unlimited number of sites. Yes, it’s like giving away free beers!
3. Download the source code and build it yourself. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is about freedom of choice. If you don’t like paying, you can always download the source code for free and build it yourself. It’s not for the faint at heart, though… BTW, the Bleeding Edge will only serve SVN builds of the Free version.
4. Donate 20 Euros and get 1 year of access to the Special Edition downloads. This is – obviously! – what I am hoping you’ll do if you are a serious webmaster or a web professional. Our site will have an integrated “donate & register” sign-up feature to support this option. Everybody who has donated the equivalent of 17 Euros or more since January 2008 will be entitled to a free account.

Please note that no matter if you use the Free or Special Edition version, how you got it and if you have a current JoomlaPack Club membership, you can use our software on an unlimited number of sites – commercial or not-for-profit – and for an unlimited amount of time. There will be no restrictions whatsoever. This is possible thanks to the provisions of the GNU General Public License under which JoomlaPack is licensed.

Some things were, are and will eternally remain free of charge. All of the other tools, like Kickstart and eXtract, will remain free of charge. Support will remain free of charge, for all. We take great pride in our support and we are willing to keep it this way! Documentation will be provided on-line and free of charge (albeit with a few unobtrusive advertisements) through our JoomlaPack.net site.

All of these changes will be applied somewhere in the first half of March, so don’t ask me for details yet! I hope you don’t mind this small change of policy. It’s just that the developer needs money to buy something to eat and rent a place to stay (and write code – computers don’t like rain).

Getting closer to 2.1

We are getting closer to the release of 2.1.b2, a landmark release of JoomlaPack. With this version, we are getting closer to what we considered feature-complete all along those two years. The new features – compared to 2.0 – are:

• Easy Mode. We were all newbies and inexperienced users. Some of you have installed Joomla! only a short while ago and find the plethora of JoomlaPack’s features, options and settings intimidating. Feel intimidated no more! The Easy Mode basically provides a cut-down, easy to grasp, oversimplified interface without compromising on the effectiveness. The configuration page is much easier to use, as you only have the choice between three predefined sets of configuration options. Newcomers to the world of Joomla!, welcome the easiest way to backup your site.
• Off-site directory inclusion filter. Backup folders outside your web server’s root!
• Extension filters. Single click exclusion of components, modules, plug-ins, templates or even languages from your backup! In other words: build a site with everything installed; if you need a customized version, just select which extensions not to back up. Cool feature for professional web developers.
• Front-end “light mode” backup. You can now back up from any Internet-capable device: EeePC’s, Pocket PC’s, cellphones, Wi-Fi enabled iPods… you name it!
• Support for tar and tar.gz. Note that tar.gz requires an external gzip executable. A niche feature for all you *NIX fans.
• Automatic troubleshooter. JoomlaPack detects if it failed last time and tries to apply two sets of “safe but slow” defaults. This will let it run smoothly on even more hosts without asking us for help and without you having to tweak Magic Numbers. Nice and clean!
• Better notification of potential issues. Potential problems will show up before backing up; this is the best approach to help you to keep out of harm’s way.

JoomlaPack also received its fair share of bug fixes and minor adjustments. From the easiest to the fairly complex, these fixes and adjustments help our software work in even more “difficult” environments.

As always, we are commited to providing the community with a professional grade, reliable, open source and Free (as in speech and as in beer) backup solution, complete with documentation, support and a set of incredible utilities.

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!

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.