Clear history button 

You can now clear your backup history by clicking this button. This will make it so you can see the relevant information relating to a recent backup.

Updates to the backup monitor

I have made a few changes to the backup monitor to make it a bit more robust. In addition I have added a ‘Stop backup’ button allows you to stop a backup in progress if some goes awry.

General fixes

As well as these new features I have made some significant changes to the plumbing to get the plugin more robust in extreme circumstances.

WordPress 3.3 compatibility

Nothing had to be changed to get this bad boy woking with 3.3!

Happy holidays to all

I hope everyone has a safe holiday period and a fantastic new year.

I will be back in the new year to make this plugin the best backup solution for WordPress and will endeavour to adress any issues that arise.

Download it here

What do you do? Luckily you have backed up your blog using WordPress Backup to Dropbox on a regular basis so you can easily restore you blog back to its finest form in a few steps.

This tutorial uses cPanel and phpMyAdmin that are very common for most hosting providers. If you do not have cPanel or phpMyAdmin similar steps should work with other site configuration and management tools and database managers, you will just need to dig around to find the right actions.

On my server I access cPanel via the ‘/cpanel’ route eg ‘http://www.mikeyd.com.au/cpanel’ if this is not the same for you contact your host to find out how to access it.

Step 1: Move your current WordPress installation to a temporary folder

You site is now borked so its files are corrupt its best to get the current installation out the way so you can revert it to your backed up version. Of course you can skip this step if you have no current WordPress installation or its only your database that is corrupt.

The best way to do this is using your favorite FTP client or web based file manager create a new folder called ‘tempblog’ or something similar and mover the contents of your blogs root directory into it.

Image 1: Dragging and dropping all my blog files into ‘blogtemp’ using the cPanel File Manager v3

At this you may wish to upload a simple file named ‘index.html’ with some text explaining that your site is down for maintenance. A file named ‘index.html’ is usually served by Apache before any PHP files so make sure you delete it when you have finished restoring your blog.

Step 2: Upload you backed up files

Now you are ready to upload your backed up files to your server. If you have the Drobox client installed on your computer your backup will be within your defined folder, if not you will need to download them from Dropbox manually.

I am using cPanel File Manager v3 to do this but it can be done using your favorite FTP client or another web based file manager. Firstly you will need to create a zip archive of your WordPress backup and upload it to your server.

Note: If you are using an FTP client you dont need to make a zip. Instead upload the files directly to your server.

Image 2: Selecting all my WordPress files and zipping them up on Max OSX

Now find the newly uploaded file and extract the contents of the zip archive into your blogs root directory, again this can be skipped if you are using a FTP client.

Image 3: Extracting my zipped archive after uploading it using cPanel File Manager v3

We no have our backed up blog files back on our server! But its not over yet. Now we need to restore our backed up database.

Image 4: My backed up WordPress files are now in my blogs root directory

Step 3: Rename your current WordPress database

Most hosts these days ship with a nifty tool know has phpMyAdmin that can be accessed within cPanel under databases.

Image 5: Clicking phpMyAdmin within a list of database tools in cPanel

Once phpMyAdmin has been loaded and you have a current WordPress installation that you wish to overwrite you will need to first re-name it so you can restore your backed up version. This can be done by selecting the databases tab and then choosing the WordPress database you intend to replace with your backed up version.

Image 7: Clicking ‘mikeydc_wrdp1′, the WordPress database I intend to replace with my backed up version

Now that your database has been selected you will need to rename it within the Operations tab by choosing a new name for it, clicking ‘go’ and then clicking ‘ok’.

Image 8: Renaming the database to ‘mikeydc_wrdp_old’ within the operations tab and being presented with the confirmation prompt

Step 4: Restore your blogs database using phpMyAdmin

Now that the old database is out the way you can use the phpMyAdmin import tool to import your backed up SQL file. To do so you will need to go to the phpMyAdmin home menu by clicking the little house on the left hand side. Once here click on the Import tab, click the ‘choose file’ button and locate your SQL backup.

Image 9: Selecting my backed database SQL file within the phpMyAdmin import tab

Now that you have located your SQL file all you need to do is click ‘go’ and your backed up database will be restored.

Image 10: A successful import

Thats it!

Step 5: Verifying and cleaning up

If you created the ‘index.html’ maintenance page, you can delete this now and verify that your site is back to its former glory. Once you are happy that its back you can delete the old database and the temp folder containing all the old WordPress.

Remember your milage may vary because everyones servers and setups are different. If you have any issues, feel free to ask a question in the comments below.

Permission Issues

Some people have been having issues with the plugin due to their server permissions and this release attempts to warn the user when certain tasks cannot be performed due to this.

When the plugin cannot create the SQL dump directory you will now be told to create it manually. If this folder is not writeable the SQL backup cannot be created so a warning will be displayed to the user.

In addition to this, any directories that cannot be read by PHP will be skipped rather then killing the backup.

Backup Monitor

This release also includes a simple backup monitor that will also replace the ‘Backup now’ option. When a backup is in progress you can go to it and see any current warnings and the current file that is being processed.

When there is no backup in progress, clicking the ‘Backup now’ link will instantly start a new backup that you can monitor.

I plan to iterate on this feature in coming releases.

Exclude Files and Directories

This brand new widget gives you more flexibility of what you want backed up. All you have to do is check which files yo do not want to be backed up and the plugin wil take care of the rest.

In the image above the user has chosen to exclude the images directory and two files within the css directory. As you can see, when the contents of a directory ar partially included, the checkbox is marked as with a circle.

Note: Unfortunately this widget is not available for Internet Explorer 7 users. Please update your browser to use it.

Unlink Account

Many people use the plugin on multiple blogs pointing to the same dropbox account and, in the past it was difficult to change the account that you where linked to. Now you can easily unlink you account by pressing the ‘Unlink Account’ button.

More Languages

Thanks to Bejana from bejana.com the plugin is now available in Bahasa Indonesian.

If you want it in your language please use the POT file, translate it and get in contact with me.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone for their feedback and bug reports.

Please keep them coming because the only way I can make the plugin better is knowing about the issues.

Why you say?

Because I like to socialise and the current meetups in Melbourne are all specialised to one language or technology. I wanted a higher level meetup where developers from different backgrounds can come along and share ideas. In addition I reckon Melbourne is the Silicone Valley of Australia and getting talented developers together will only solidify this statement!

What is it?

Melbourne Web Developers is a bi-monthly meetup that brings together Melbourne’s awesomely talented web development community to exchange ideas, have a beer and talk about all things interwebs related!

We cover web development topics including high scalability, user experience (UX), web frameworks and languages, social media, harnessing cloud tools and SAAS and anything else that makes web applications work!

When is it?

Its the last Wednesday of every second month… So the first meetup is on the 28th of September.

How do I join?

The group is listed on Meetup who takes care of all of that! Check out – http://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Web-Developers

Here is what has been fixed!

Added ‘desktop.ini’ to the ignored file list

This is another file that is on the Dropbox ignore list. I have not managed to find a definitive list in the Dropbox documentation that lists all of these!

Issue #28 – repeated ‘Backup appears to have gone away’ messages to do with the suhosin.memory_limit being exceeded

This one has baffled me for some time now! Many users where getting repeated messages stating that the ‘Backup has gone away – Resuming’. This was because the script was being killed by the Suhosin patch. So in order to overcome this I have made some changes to detect the Suhosin memory limit and exclude any files that could potentially breach this limit. A warning will be displayed for any file that is excluded.

Issue #31 Recognize alternate wp-content location via wp-config.php constants

This was a quick change to honour the WP_PLUGIN_URL constant set in the wp-config file.

HTTP Time out when saving settings

This issue was affecting one or two users who had a large amount of files in their installation. I have made some changes to the exclude dialog so it will only send through what has actually changed that will reduce that data sent to the server.

Well thats it! You can download WordPress Backup to Dropbox 0.9 Beta 2 here.

I hope this release works well! As usual please let me know if you run into any issues.

New Features

The first thing you will notice after installing 0.9 is the exclude files or directories widget.

This widget will show every file within your WordPress directory giving you the ability to select what you wish to exclude from the backup. Checking a file will exclude it from the backup and checking a directory will exclude it and all its contents. A circle is displayed for a directory where at least one file or directory within it is to be included in the backup. In the example above the ‘cgi-bin’ directory and the ‘align-not.png’ file are to be excluded from the backup. The ‘wp-admin’ and ‘images’ directory are marked as partial because only one file is excluded within them.

Please Note: This widget is not available for Internet Explorer 7 or below. If you are one of the unfortunate souls that still use this deprecated browser please update!

Issues Fixed

In addition to this new widget I have fixed the following issues:

• Issue #18 – Issues with the path separator for windows users
• Issues with re-authorizing the plugin after access has been revoked from within Dropbox
• Tweaked the backup monitor task timings in an attempt to fix backup resume spamming
• Added a domain to i18n function calls for easier translation
• Issue #25 – Error or conflict when activating WordPress Backup to Dropbox

New Languages

The plugin is now available in the following languages:

• Arabic (ar)
• Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR)
• Portuguese (pt_PT)
• Galician Spanish (gl_ES)
• Spanish (es_ES)

Known Issues

Get testing!

Click here to download WordPress Backup to Dropbox 0.9 beta 1.

Lets just say you botched a post and want to revert to a database a few days old. To do so go to the Dropbox web interface and navigate to the file that you wish to revert.

Once you have located the file all you need to do is click the little down arrow on the right hand side and select ‘Previous Versions’.

Note: You can also select ‘Previous Versions’ within the Dropbox folder on your computer by right clicking on the file and selecting this option in the Dropbox sub menu.

Once selected you will be presented Dropbox’s Previous versions page.

As you can see I dump my WordPress database every day so I can revert my SQL dump to any version within the last 30 days by selecting the day that I wish to revert to and clicking the restore button.

More information can be found in the Dropbox help page.

In this release I have significantly changed the way backups are performed in order to make the process more efficient, smarter and use less memory and bandwidth. The biggest problems that people have been reporting is the plugin “Does not work” or “Starts but no backup is appearing in Dropbox”. Firstly, let me assure you, that I tested the original version on few WordPress installations and all seemed fine, unfortunately, my sample size was too small and others have run into problems.

I managed to identify three major issues that contributed to failing backups.

Issue 1: Memory

Zipping large files in PHP can be quite memory intensive and the method I originally used read an entire file into memory before compressing it and adding it to the archive. So if your website contained a file that was approximately 50% the size of your PHP memory limit setting then the process would raise a fatal error. In version 0.7.2 I added a quick hack that increases this limit via the ini_set() function. Unfortunately modifying this setting is blocked when PHP is running in safe mode or the Suhosin Patch has been applied. The former of which is very common on shared hosts around the world.

The same issue applies when uploading a file to Dropbox which is bad considering that a websites archive can easily be quite large!

In this new version I have removed zipping altogether in favor of a smarter differential backup algorithm. Each file will now be uploaded individually if does not exist in Dropbox, or has changed on your sever since the last backup.  Of course, this will mean that your initial backup will be larger then that of a zipped archive, however all subsequent backups will only contain files that have changed thus decreasing bandwidth.

In addition I have added a warning system where, instead of failing, the algorithm will log a warning if an upload of a file fails. Currently a warning is raised if it encounters a file that will exceed the memory limit setting in PHP, the upload times out or there is an error connecting to the Dropbox server.

Issue 2: Safe Mode

A backup can take a very long time to complete so the plugin needs to set PHP’s max execution time to unlimited to get the job done. If your server has PHP compiled with safe mode enabled then there is no way this can be set in code. For more information please read the blog post I wrote about this problem.

If you are in this situation the plugin will now warn you that you need to manually set you max execution time to a larger value and  attempt to backup your WordPress installation. If the backup duration nears this setting then the backup will fail alerting you to the fact that it is has been set too low.

Issue 3: Your Host

The third major issue I encountered is the fact that some hosts, including my own, kill long running processes. So regardless of the setting you have set above if the process takes longer then the host allows it will be killed. To get around this I have introduced cron job to the plugin that will monitor the backup process to ensure it is still running. If the monitor notices that no activity has occurred in five minutes then a new backup process will be started resuming from where the last one failed.

Conclusion

In addition to these major fixes I have added validation of the paths and fixed a couple smaller issues to increase the stability of the plugin.

I hope this version will work for all, however there is no such thing as bug free code! So if you have any issues, rather then just giving the plugin a low rating or tagging it as broken, please let me know and I will endeavor to fix them.

Issues can be raised in the BitBucket issue tracker or the WordPress forum for my plugin.

If the PHP installation was not compiled in safe mode then we can change this value within the application using set_time_limit. So for any long running scripts setting the time limit to zero will tell PHP to allow the script to run forever.

However if your PHP installation is running in safe mode, this function is blocked and there is no way of altering the time limit from within the application. Therefore the only way to get the an application to complete its task the php.ini max_execution_time setting will need to be altered. In the case of WordPress Backup to Dropbox this setting needs to be set to at least 3600 seconds  (1 hour).

How easily this value can be changes depends on how your hosts PHP installation is configured. If your host allows it you can put a file named php.ini inside the root of your WordPress installation with the max_execution_time set.

max_execution_time = 0

If this does not work then you have to edit the value in your php.ini file. The location of this file depends on your operating system and a quick Google search will yield plenty of literature on how this is done.