Help & Support
This plugin is provided WITHOUT warranty. We’ve taken measures to test it on a number of web hosts but it is your responsibility to test it out as well as make a full backup before you install or use this plugin. In addition, plugin is provided for free and we cannot promise support as that would be too time consuming and costly.
With all that said, this page will be a frequently asked questions page that will be written as questions come in. If you have questions about AWB, please ask below and we’ll attempt to answer it in a way that will be useful for everyone else. Before we get the FAQs, let’s look the requirements for the plugin.
Plugin Requirements
- Linux host
- PHP 5.1+
- Uploads folder that is writable (exact permissions will vary but 777 normally does the trick)
- curl – this is a software for Linux that must already be installed
- shell_exec – this needs to be enabled to allow the zipping process. We don’t use a php zip library because it would limit your zip size to the amount of memory that is allocated by your host.
- zip – another software for Linux that needs to be already installed. It comes installed by default on most flavors of Linux but if it’s not installed, you’ll need it to be.
Questions & Answers
Q. The plugin is causing an error. What do I do? I can’t even reach my admin panel. Help!
A. Login to your web host via FTP and remove the ‘automatic-wordpress-backup’ folder from the /wp-content/plugins/ folder. Next, check the Web Host Compatibility page to see if your host is listed as compatible. If they are listed under untested, leave a comment below with your web host and we’ll email you to schedule a time to walk through the setup and in the process test that web host.
Q. Where is the database backup file?
A. Inside your zip, under wp-content > uploads > wp-s3-database-backup.sql
Q. Is this plugin compatible with WordPress Mu?
A. We haven’t tested it yet but the answer is probably “No” because of how MU stores files. Since Mu will be getting merged into regular WordPress in the near future, we probably won’t be spending time on adding compatibility for mu. Sorry.
Q. Is there a security risk to 777 on the uploads folder?
Please check out WordPress’s article on the dangers of 777. The crux of the issue is that the risk occurs when a hacker is able to upload a file into your website is the key time when they’ll be able to read and write files in your uploads folder and other folders. However, if a hacker is able to upload a file, they would have access to their entire database and be able regardless of the permissions set on the wp-content folders. The key really is to only upload plugins and files that you trust.
{ 470 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve tried to use this plugin, but while it seems to properly backup the site (I have a sql file and zip file in the wp-content/uploads directory), I get nothing in my S3 repositories. The plugin seems to be able to see the different s3 buckets I have configured, but after the plugin “seems” to complete its work, I get nothing in my selected bucket.
Any ideas about how I can make this work or how I can debug?
Thanks!
Dana, did you click on the “Save Changes and Backup Now”?
I did save, and eventually it started working, but it seemed to take a long time to push to S3, and didn’t work all the time when done manually.
The automatic backups do seem to be working, though.
I installed and tried to activate the plugin and now my entire wordpress admin site is reporting this error:
Fatal error: Undefined class name ‘self’ in /usr/local/pem/vhosts/198947/webspace/httpdocs/httpdocs/wpblog/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/automatic-wordpress-backup.php on line 86
I can’t even edit permissions using an FTP program. Whats gone wrong? Urgent help needed.
Here’s the conversation I had with Remington via email for those who are interested:
Me: Do you have FTP access to the website? If so, login to the FTP, and remove the ‘automatic-wordpress-backup’ folder from the /wp-content/plugins/ folder. If you need help with this, let me know.
Remi: I have tried that but I am getting the following error:
automatic-wordpress-backup: Directory not empty Error -126: remote rmdir failed.
The directory is however empty. I have renamed the folder and this seems to have resolved the problem. Thanks for your prompt help!
Me: Sorry about the funk. Are you able to setup a second WordPress website (just a generic one) and give me access to it so we can go in and test out what was going wrong?
Remi: Sure, I can look into that after
Hey Remington, do you happen to be using PHP4 on your host? If so, that is the problem. The plugin requires PHP5. We’ll add a note to that effect.
Hi-
Great plugin! I just came across this plugin and viewed your online video setup. I wanted to recommend a new video on how to restore or setup a new install using the backup.
Alex
Thanks Alex! Great idea. We’ve got that on the To Do list and it’s definitely a high priority for me personally. We’ve got a lot of client websites using WordPress and if I had to restore each one manually, it would be torture.
Hi Melvin-
Two other suggestions (now that I have the plugin installed) I would like better control over the backup schedule. For example, backups on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I don’t really need daily backups but weekly may be to long. Also, I think this may be a bug where the plugin itself is not reading the proper time zone. I just initiated a manual backup and the plugin is showing it as a recent backup with the wrong time on it. The plugin reports 8:57 AM and the current time is 1:57 PM.
Thanks again, this looks like a great plugin.
Alex
Hey Alex, thanks for the feedback.
More control over schedule – Interesting. I think having daily may be more than you want today but life might change and it’s better to have more backups than less backups. However, making good use of space is important to keep costs low so we’ll look at that a little closer in the future.
Time zones – Hmmm, that’s odd. We’ll look at that soon.
Alex,
Are you still seeing this issue since you upgraded to WordPress 2.9? In my testing, 2.8 shows the times wrong but 2.9 is correct (based on your WordPress timezone setting).
Hi Dan-
Yes the time is still off. If I recall correctly I have been on 2.9 since I first installed the plugin.
Alex
You guys should add an option in the settings of the plugin that allows for downloading all the backed up data onto a local machine – instead of only to an S3 server.
@matt – Noted.
Seriously, why would I want to pay for an Amazon S3 account when I’m already paying for my own hosting elsewhere (hence the WordPress blog I need to backup)… I suppose if you’re blog is hosted by WordPress this may be feasible, but honestly, having WordPress host your blog is just a bad idea from the get-go… which makes this plugin squarely targeted at newbs, and completely useless to everyone else.
It separates risk. When your host’s hard drive crashes, you’ll still have access to your backups. And yes, it’s a when, not an if. All hard drives crash.
this plugin is a potential life-saver for anybody who uses wordpress.org on their self-hosted blogs…the whole point is to have ANOTHER safe copy backed up which ISN’T on your own hard drive. how can you say this is aimed at “newbs”? i just don’t get what you mean here! great plugin…great support.
Just noticed a new version is out. PLEASE keeps a change log, it is frustrating upgrading a plugin without knowing what’s new/changed, etc.
Good idea Alex. I’ve posted what’s new at http://www.wordpressbackup.org/v1-0-2/ and we’ll add the changelog starting with the next update which will likely be in a few weeks or less.
This is a great plug-in, and it has worked well for me on my personal site. For this commercial site in development (dev.itevcorp.com), however, I can’t seem to generate any manual backups. I click the “Save Changes and Backup Now,” but no backup file appears to be generated either locally in the wp-content/uploads folder or in my S3 bucket. No error messages appear on the settings page or anywhere else. The server is a Rackspace Cloud server I built myself. It uses PHP5, and the wp-content/uploads folder has 755 permissions. (I tried it with 777 permissions with same result, and set it back to 755 out of caution.)
I’m sure I’m missing something. Got any suggestions?
Thanks for the great work!
Chris
I would recommend waiting. One thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes it takes longer than you might expect and appears to not work but it’s in the process. Also, the more times you set it to do a manual backup, the more memory it uses which probably slows down the process of backing up even more. Let it sit and come back to it later and see if it worked. If it doesn’t, comment again and we’ll take things from there.
Chris,
There is a bug in WordPress 2.9 that prevents the plugin from working on some hosting configurations. For me, this was resolved in the 2.9.1 beta.
Thanks, Melvin and Dan. I’m grateful for your speedy response.
It still hasn’t backed up after my initial manual requests from about five hours ago, so I’m leaning toward the WP 2.9 bug explanation. I’ll do a proof of concept using a site copy with WP 2.9.1 beta on another server and see what happens.
Thanks!
Chris
Not sure if this is possible, but I have another suggestion. I would like to be able to set the approximate time that the backup is done. Mine seems to run at 8:57 or 8:58 AM every day. I would prefer this to be at a different time.
We’ll keep that in mind as we plan out the future development of AWB and see if it’s possible.
What determines the time when a backup happens? For example, if I set it for daily backups and then do a manual backup will the next automatic backup be 24 hours from that or something else?
Thanks for all your work on this great plugin!
I’m not 100% sure but it’s probably based on when the settings data is saved initially.
Yes, it is approximately 24 hours from when you save the setting. Depending on how much traffic you get, that may vary slightly from day to day as the backup is triggered by visits to your blog.
I don’t recommend this but one way to control the timing of your backup would be using the WP-Crontrol plugin. We’ll probably add a feature to easily change the time but since you and another fellow have asked, I thought I’d mention it the hackish way of doing it. Now I don’t have much experience with this and highly recommend AGAINST messing with this. We can’t provide any support if something goes haywire.
i have a problem with it backing up the database, yes it did sent a backup zip to amazon s3 on a bucket called automaticwordpressbackups but when i downloaded and unzipped to checkit it doesn’t contain the database in it, i’m very sure i ticked the box called database dump on the plugin options page. Can you help me with this?
Thanks.
- j
isn’t it suppose to backup also the database? But when i checked the backups on s3 there where no database included? I tested this in 6 sites, it is working great but the database does not get backed up, it is not included. I have ticked the box that says database dump that suppose to do the backup of the DB but no backups still showing on s3 with the database. Do you have a solution for this?
oh By the way thanks for this wonderful plugin.
Inside your zip, under wp-content > uploads > wp-s3-database-backup.sql
I installed the plugin and got it running with a manual backup. It appears to have backed up the theme, php, etc. files but not the database. I’m basing that on the links to Amazon S3 in the plugin area…when I downloaded the updates it didn’t include the SQL. Any thoughts?
Inside your zip, under wp-content > uploads > wp-s3-database-backup.sql
Thanks, I’ll write up a review on this. Please send me an email (address in your wordpress) as I have a couple follow up questions for the story.
We just installed your plugin to a couple sites of mine on Hostgator.com and tested the backups. I see the wp-s3-database-backup.sql file in the uploads folder. Is this correct?
At first I didn’t think that this was backed up until I looked around in the un-zipped file I downloaded.
This looks to be a great tool that I will use for my sites and clients also. If all goes well with it I’ll be happy to donate for each client installation we do. Great work!
Henry
Thanks Henry!
Wooh ok sorry. I must have been too dizzy working that i did not looked in the uploads folder hehe. Thanks for this. The database is in uploads folder.
- j
No problem. Glad you’re going to be using the plugin.
Hi!
I installed the plugin succesfully. But I can seem to create a bucket via the plugin admin panel. I keep getting the error: “No bucket was created. You may have entered a bucket name that already exists on another account.”
The folders are all chmod’ed 777 and I’ve tried difernet names.
What could be causing this?
Dipfico – Have you tried using ‘yourdomainname.com-backup’ as a name (obviously replacing yourdomainname.com for your real domain name) for a bucket name?
Yes, I did!
dipfico.be-backup
And no luck?
sorry, forgot to mention that.
Nope, no luck
I know this might sound dumb, but can you try ‘dipfico.be-backup2′ as a bucket name and report back if that works.
Unfortunately, that didn’t work either
Which host are you using? We might end up doing testing on that host to figure whats up.
For the time being though, I recommend using a S3 client to make a bucket. On OSX, http://s3hub.com is fairly well used. On PCs, http://s3browser.com seems to be the popular one. Once you’ve created your bucket in one of those clients, you should be able to backup to it.
Let me try that!
Keep you posted
THNX in advance for the quick help
Hi
This plugin looks like it could be exactly what I need – I will be more than happy to make a donation for each customer I use this for.
Bu first, a problem: I have installed the plugin & entered my details, and it has successfully created my bucket on S3, I’ve clicked ‘save and backup now’, but after over 25 minutes the backup is still not created (the message “your manual backup has started…” is still there after many page refreshes). I am only backing up my plugins folder (as a test) so it shouldn’t take that long. I’m running my site on a VPS (PHP 5.1.6) so I wonder if it’s something to do with the server config?
Second, a suggestion: I use the NextGen Gallery plugin and have it configured to store images in a different folder to my uploads (e.g. wp-content/galleries). Is it therefore possible to add an option to backup the entire wp-content folder, as well as the individual options for plugins, themes & uploads folders?
Thanks very much
Simon
Hi
After various attempts at tweaking the plugin it still wouldn’t work on my VPS (probably because my server is set up much more securely than your average shared hosting).
So in the end I have installed s3sync and adapted the script from this post: http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-bulletproof-server-backups-with-amazon-s3 and set up a cron job so it runs automatically each week.
Cheers
Simon
I’m glad you found a solution. In case anyone else is wondering if you can add non-standard folders to a backup, the answer is “yes, but it takes a little PHP code.” If anyone specifically wants help with this, let us know and we can put together a quick example.
I would definitely be interested in seeing this example. I plan to use this with clients and I’m certain that issue will crop up eventually. Would love to be prepared. Thanks!
Hello,
if have modified the script that you can select “Uploaded nggallery pictures” to backup the wp-content/galleries folder (if exists)…
To the author: An option to backup the entire wp-content folder would be very useful!
This is my modified Script with nggalerry backup option: http://nopaste.info/be1140fef0.html
rgds,
Patrick
I was able to get this plugin to work on a cheapy shared hosting service. No luck with Media Temple’s VPS (PHP 5.2). Same issues as Simon mentions above. The buckets are created but they are empty using either manual or scheduled backups.
Hope you can fix these issues in the next revision. Brilliant plugin!
Robert, can you check with WordPress 2.9.1? Backups were not working on my hosting (not through MT, though), until I set up 2.9.1.
Hi Dan…
No luck even with WP 2.91. The buckets are empty. I have tried both scheduled and manual.
A cheapy shared hosting works OK. But not Media Temple’s VPS.
This is brilliant stuff! Great work!
Sorry if this has been asked already, but… wpmu???
I’d love to see this incorporated. We’d really just need the additional options of adding the “blogs.dir” and “mu-plugins” directories under wp-content.
Also, if you need some help testing it out, I have a test wpmu install (2.9-rc-1) for just such purposes. Feel free to let me know!
Hey James, Most likely it isn’t because of how MU stores files. Since Mu will be getting merged into regular WordPress in the near future, we probably won’t be spending time on adding compatibility for mu. Sorry.
This looks like a great plugin! Does anyone know if it’s WordPress MU/BuddyPress compatible?
Most likely it isn’t because of how MU stores files. Since Mu will be getting merged into regular WordPress in the near future, we probably won’t be spending time on adding compatibility for mu. Sorry.
What about BuddyPress?
Not sure how & where BuddyPress saves files so can’t say for sure. We’ll need some pioneers to test it out and report back.
As far as I understand, BuddyPress is built on WPMU, so it’s unlikely that this plugin would work there, either.
Yep.. if WPMU is compatible BP is compatible as well.. so you have support for both when WPMU works
I just wanted to report that the plugin appears to work with MediaTemple, where my blog is hosted. It backed the site up without a hitch! Thanks for a great—and simple—plugin.
Awesome!
Is “Automatic WordPress Backup” compatible with WordPress MU?
Most likely it isn’t because of how MU stores files. Since Mu will be getting merged into regular WordPress in the near future, we probably won’t be spending time on adding compatibility for mu. Sorry.
That’s a shame
Because it could take several months before it actually happens (the merge).. This would become a very popular plugin is WPMU and BuddyPress users could use it.. Please consider adding support for this because I believe it would not take that much of work.. please correct me if I’m wrong 
Thanks Bowe for the suggestion. We’ll keep it in mind as we move forward but I can’t make any promises yet.
Hi Michael:
Are you using the Grid Service (shared hosting) on Media Temple or the dedicated virtual (VPS)?
Is it possible to have the plugin backup my wp-config.php file?
Alex
If you have “config and .htaccess” selected, it should be backing up the wp-config file.
I do have it checked but I am not finding it in my backup archive.
That is strange. Does it grab your .htaccess?
It’s working in my development environment. I’m working on version 1.1.0, so if that doesn’t work, we can try to get it working from there.
No, that is what is strange. I am also using 1.0.2 on Rackspace Cloud Site. When was 1.1 released?
I mean that I’m developing 1.1.0. It hasn’t been released yet.
ah, ok.
The only thing I can think of is my wp-config.php is one level up from my root directory. Possibly the problem?
Yes, that is most likely the problem. I know that’s a fairly common setup, so I’ll look into having it find the right .htaccess and wp-config.php files.
Hi,
I’m using Antagonist, a populair webhoster in The Netherlands. After activating the plugin I see this error a lot:
Warning: curl_setopt() [function.curl-setopt]: CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION cannot be activated when in safe_mode or an open_basedir is set in \[path-to-S3.php]
Any idea?
Regards,
Patrick Mackaaij
http://www.eenmanierom.nl/
http://twitter.com/mackaaij/
Hmm can you make sure the web host supports PHP5+ and not just PHP4.
Melvin,
I’ve asked them explicitly and am waiting for an answer which I’ll probably get tomorrow.
Their reply on the error (I left the “CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION” error message at their forum as well) was that “open_basedir” is set and will probably be set by a lot of ISPs.
The (Dutch) topic is here:
http://forum.antagonist.nl/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7565&p=45908
Regards,
Patrick Mackaaij
http://www.eenmanierom.nl/
http://twitter.com/mackaaij/
Melvin,
A reply came in already, PHP 5.2.8 is in use. See all PHP settings from Antagonist at http://phpinfo.antagonist.nl/
Regards,
Patrick Mackaaij
http://www.eenmanierom.nl/
http://twitter.com/mackaaij/
I will see if I can work around the open_basedir/safe mode restriction without too much trouble.
Dan, Thanks! I’ll follow updates on this topic.
just to chime in.. I’m receiving the same CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION error.. I’d love to know the fix as well..thanks!
Hi there! I am also experiencing the same error:
“Warning: curl_setopt() [function.curl-setopt]: CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION cannot be activated when in safe_mode or an open_basedir is set in /web/[...]/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 896″
Is there a solution for this. Any help will be highly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Hi again,
Since there’s a lot of action on this topic I thought I’d try to make sure the CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION error is still being investigated. Is it? I can’t wait to get this plugin up-and-running!
Don’t know if it helps but Amazon did charge me for usage of the service so there has been some kind of interaction with their servers. Costs: $0.01
I also am receiving the “Warning: curl_setopt() [function.curl-setopt]: CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION cannot be activated when in safe_mode or an open_basedir is set” error. I look forward to an update to hopefully fix this so I can use the plugin too. Thanks!
Any news on this topic? Just installed the plugin (v 1.0.3.1) and I get the same error. Couldn’t find a solution among the Q&A.
/Mikael
Have you tried 2.0?
Sorry, I got the impression the beta was invite-only. Am on vacation on a lousy connection right now, but will try the beta as soon as I get back. Thanks.
Hi -
I waited for WordPress 2.9.1 to reactivate the Automatic WordPress Backup plugin (v1.0.2), hoping that the new WP version would overcome my inability to execute a successful S3 backup using the plugin. Unfortunately, I get the same result: My configuration settings are saved OK, no errors, but when I click the “Save Changes and Backup Now” button, no backup ever appears, either in my “Uploads” section or in my S3 bucket. The text appears that says, “Your manual backup has started. If it hasn’t yet, it will show up below once it’s completed the next time you view this page,” but no backup ever appears. I’ve waited several hours (days, in fact, before the WP 2.9.1. upgrade) for the backup to execute, but no go.
I’m running WordPress 2.9.1 on a virtual Ubuntu Server (host = Rackspace) running PHP Version 5.2.6-3ubuntu4.4. Cron appears to be running fine. Do you have any recommendations for how I can get the plugin to work for me? I’d really like to use it – the concept is exactly what I want.
Thanks!!
Chris
I don’t have a clear recommendation at the moment. As soon as I get a block of time open, I’ll setup an Ubuntu Cloud Server as see if I can get it working from there. Sorry bud for not having a more concrete answer for you at the moment.
Chris,
I’m going to contact you by email to see if I can work anything out.
I have the same issue.
Installed 2.9.1
CHModed the Uploads folder
But nothing appears there
Hope you can help us!
hi,
first of all, thanks for this great plugin. uploading to S3 works great, but the SQL file is always empty with 0 bytes. any idea?
another question:
how is it possible to backup more than one wordpress installation, without having access to the backup files of each others? as soon as i use the drop down box with buckets, i can download the backup files of the other installations.
thx
oliver
forget to say that i am using PHP 5.2.8, MySQL 5.0.32 with apache 2.
There isn’t a way to do that today. When I have projects that I don’t want to let see other files, I just create a new S3 account.
this would mean to get a lot of different invoices?
Yes it would, but the billing happens automatically so you’re not charged any more or have any additional work to do.
Dan, any idea on why the SQL file would be empty?
after some research, i found the problem:
my MySQL server is running on another port, which is usual if you are running MySQL 4 and 5 on one server.
wp-config.php: define(‘DB_HOST’, ’127.0.0.1:3307′);
your backupscript creates the following mysqldump command:
…-h 127.0.0.1:3307…
which should be
…-h 127.0.0. –port=3307…
would be great if you could fix this.
thanks a lot
oliver
Thanks for pointing this out. I’ll be able to code that in easily for 1.1.0
great, i am looking forward to the new version.
thx
oliver
Is there a manual edit to the backup script that will allow this to work until the next version is released? I am also getting an empty wp-s3-database-backup.sql file being created during the backup process. Everything else is backing up fine, just an empty sql dump file.
I am running WordPress 2.9.2 on a shared DreamHost Server.
Oliver,
Are you seeing the actual backup files of other installs in the WordPress interface? In theory, it should be filtering the backup files based on the siteurl of the specific WordPress install. Do you mean that with that access key and secret key that they could go use a client to see the backups?
My websites are all WordPress 2.9 and Thesis 1.6, hosted by HostGator on a reseller account. I have tried to use this plugin on two of them but nothing happens, rodgabfan.com and blueyonder ranch.com
I then tried it at a similar “sandbox” installation and it worked, sort of!. It ran the backup but the downloaded file contained only the WordPress files that I selected but not the database. ibmh.org/demo16/
Note: I then tried the “WordPress Database Backup” plugin and it worked OK so the problem here isn’t with access to the database. http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup
This plugin is exactly what I need but, since there is no debug information, I have no way of knowing what is wrong or not wrong.
Can you look inside your zip, under wp-content > uploads > wp-s3-database-backup.sql?
Yes. I can look inside the zip. It contains a wp-content folder, wp-config.php and .htaccess files but that all.
And how do you mean “sandbox”?
My “sandbox” is a test installation of WordPress and Thesis with virtually no content and few plugins. It allows me to test things when they don’t work right on one of my active websites that has lots of content and plugins. One of the obvious tests that I run is to see if their is a plugin conflict.
Question: What database user permissions are required?
I normally have the following: SELECT, CREATE, INSERT, ALTER, UPDATE, DROP, DELETE, INDEX.
Is this sufficient?
Yes, that should be all that you need for the purposes of this plugin.
Hello Rick.
I have a reseller account with Hostgator also and have no problem using this great tool. Look inside your wp-content >> Uploads folder and you should see the database file. Mine are fine.
Henry
Wish I could say the same thing. I have no files in my uploads folder. I have a list of recent manual backups that I can download from AWS but that’s it.
I too am running into the problem with the database not getting backed up. Here are the exact steps I can do to reproduce the problem:
1. In the “Parts of your blog to back up” section, I check only the boxes for “Config file and htaccess” and “Database dump”.
2. Click “Save Changes and Backup Now”
3. The page refreshes and I see the backup listed.
4. I download and unzip the backup file. It contains only two files: wp-config.php and .htaccess. There is no database file or any folders it could be hiding in.
If I try the same steps and check the box for nothing other than “Database dump”, the screen refreshes but there is no new backup listed under recent backups. I made sure to wait a sufficient amount of time for processing and also doubled-checked using an S3 browser and there was no file created.
I’d bee happy to do some additional checking or provide any details I can. Thanks.
I’ve completely rewritten the database backup. I hope to get the next version out later this week (unless a winter storm knocks out our power), so I’d just wait till version 1.1.0 and try that out.
Dan,
After activating the plugin, and entering the bucket keys, I get “no bucket was specified” and nothing else. The page is blank, except the two first fields. Not even a submit button. Do you know why that is?
Running PHP 5.2.6 on Linux.
If it doesn’t show you the other fields, it sounds like it’s an issue with the keys. This might sound silly but could you re-enter the access key info.
I can’t. That’s the point. All I get are the two fields… no button, nothing else, shows up. I tried entering the information and hit “enter.” I tried installing/re-installing the plugin.
Nothing.
Hello Michel,
What hosting platform/service are you on? I had this same thing happen with one of the hosting accounts we use but it is working fine on Hostgator and Hostmoster for us.
Henry
That is weird. I’ll get in touch with you via email to schedule a time to see exactly what is happening on your server.
I installed the plugin and entered the login info for Amazon, but I keep getting the message: “You need to select a valid S3 bucket. If you tried to create a new bucket, it may have been an invalid name” and “No bucket was created. You may have entered a bucket name that already exists on another account.”
Using S3 Browser I created a bucket, but the drop down list remains empty on the plugin settings page.
I’m running PHP 5.2.6 on a dedicated server, but don’t know what else I should try (I deleted and re-installed and entered the login info for S3 more than once.)
I’ll send you an email and try to schedule a time to connect so we can walk through the process together.
Any news on the next revision?
I am working on the new version. I’ve gotten a couple of bugs worked out and a new restore feature that needs some testing before I release it.
Great Backup Solutions! It work on my dedicated server but when i download and extract the Backup files the wp-s3-database-backup.sql show “0″ size and has no data entries.
Any clue?
A few people have reported this issue and so the database backup component has been rewritten in the next version to address this very issue. It should be released in the next week or so.
Thank You Melvin, great Support! I would be happy to donate/buy the plugin when you offer this!
Hi there – great looking plugin!
I saw mentioned above maybe the possibility of having it save to the local file system (the sites server) instead of having to use Amazon. Is this something that might be implemented in the next version? I don’t want to use Amazon so have yet to try the plugin.
Thanks
/Doug
You really don’t want to keep the backup on the same system/server as your website. We have considered this and it’s not a top priority. FTP uploading is something we’ve talked about and will get implemented in a few versions. Right now the priority is to get it to be a mature plugin that does everything that is needed using Amazon S3 as the storage mechanism because it’s so cheap and reliable.
If you’re with a reliable hosting provider, or better yet, a cloud host… there’s no need to pay for Amazon services, no matter how cheap they may be… a good host does auto backups AND has redundancy/mirroring.
This leads one to think you’re using Amazon as an affiliate pump… which isn’t an issue, people are happy to return the favor… but you really need to fully disclose, if that’s what you’re doing… otherwise it’s shady.
The system already seems to dump backups onto the local server… so WHY would I need an Amazon S3 account… and WHY are you apprehensive to activate your plugin to work this way?
a) If you feel comfortable with the backups of your hosting provider, no one is forcing you to backup to S3.
I’m on the Rackspace Cloud Sites platform. I trust them. However, I’ve got a few hundred websites (both mine and clients) on their system. It would be crazy to not have an external backup plan. Even if I had one money site that was important to me or my business, I’d pay the $0.15/GB it takes to KNOW that it’s getting backed up and I can move to a different host if this one goes off the rails.
b) It’s a bad idea to keep your files and your backup on the same system. Jeff Atwood’s codinghorror.com website had a hard drive failure late last year, which meant that if he had his backups on the same system, it would be gone. No point in making backups if they won’t be there when you need them.
c) You ask “WHY are you apprehensive to activate your plugin to work this way?” It’s mainly because I would have to pay my developer to add that feature and when it comes to priorities, adding local server backup is much lower on the list than being able to quickly and automatically do a restore… which is the big feature of v2.0 of the plugin.
d) We’re not getting a single penny back from Amazon. I don’t know if they have an affiliate program for S3. If they do, we’re not signed up for it. We have one single link to S3 and it’s very clearly not an affiliate link. What’s with the conspiracy theory here? Time to take off the tin-foil hat Um, Yeah.
As they say, once you get burned, you don’t forget. Hope you don’t have to learn your lesson the hard way.
We completed a restore to a clean test site from the backup off of a Host Monster server and all is well. This was using WP eCommerce plugin and all the files, a couple hundred product images and all the data are there.
This week I will be doing a video and blog posting on your great addition to the WordPress family.
I have a client with nearly 100 sites on Media Temple Grid Server that we will test next. Has anyone found that to work yet?
Henry
This plugin seems to be almost working for me, but not quite. First off, it said my “uploads” directory wasn’t writeable, even though it was. I noticed that it had created an “awb” directory in the “uploads” directory, but the awb directory had no permissions at all.
I made the awb directory writeable and executable, which at least made the error message about “uploads” not being writeable go away. But it still won’t back up. It seems to have created a .htaccess file in “awb”, but that has no permissions either (no read, write, or execute for anybody.)
Is it possible that my hosting server defaults to granting no permissions on new files, and the plugin isn’t setting them either, and therefore can’t use the files it’s creating? Or am I missing something else?
All help gratefully received!
Thanks,
Matt
I’ll get in touch with you via email to walk through the setup process together to make sure we haven’t missed anything.
Thanks for the help, Melvin; I’ve sent you a mail.
In the meantime, for anyone else that’s got the same problem — I found that using my web host’s file manager and manually making the “uploads/awb” directory readable, writeable and executable by the server/WordPress user (basically the equivalent of a “chmod 700 awb” in my case) solved the problem, and Automatic WordPress Backup is now working fine for me.
I just installed this plugin on about 7 sites. The backup worked completely fine on 4 of them, but seems stalled on the other three. They are all on the same server.
Any suggestions on how i can debug why those three won’t do a backup (they say a manual backup has been started, but it’s not completing).
Thanks.
One possibility is that the 3 sites are larger in size. I would give it some time and see if it has worked. It would be quiet strange for them all to be on the same server and some to work and others to not work.
It’s actually the opposite – the ones that aren’t working are really small and low traffic sites. But they haven’t done anything in two hours. I ran a manual backup on one of the other sites and it completed in about 30 seconds.
Just to make sure we’re on the same, by “really small”, you mean that it doesn’t have that much files that have been uploaded into the media library (such as images, audio, pdfs or videos), right?
Right, hardly any files, hardly any traffic, hardly any content — just a basic WP site.
Weird. I’ll get in touch via email to see if we can get this sorted out for you.
So I did a bit of debugging. One bug is that the plugin assumes the uploads directory exists, but it’s only created when someone uploads content. On one of my sites that had never happened, since it was basically a static site. Not sure about the other sites, but I’m still debugging.
Oh yea, I mentioned that in the installation video but I should mention that in the FAQs at the top of this page.
Strangely enough, one those other sites if I hit /wp-cron.php directly it’ll do the backup. But it doesn’t seem to fire before.
I started working the plugin to work with MU. Basically, instead of going in the /plugins folder, you need to upload the individual files and folders to /mu-plugins. Once you do this it automatically installs the plugin for site wide use. You’ll see the WDC Options at the very bottom of the admin sidebar.
Unfortunately (for me) I use nginx, which does not support ftp, so I couldn’t test it. One way to get it to work could be to rename options.php, upload a non mu options.php, save your backup options, then replace options.php with your original options.php.
Another way might be to use the following link as a guide to adding the WDC init actions: http://planetozh.com/blog/2009/05/handling-plugins-options-in-wordpress-28-with-register_setting/
Hi;
Just installed the plugin and I get the following error;
Fatal error: Undefined class name ‘self’ in /mnt/w0201/d06/s17/b029a8c0/www/over50tech.com/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/automatic-wordpress-backup.php on line 86
My webhost is Netfirms.com.
Thanks for any help you can offer.
oops, switched php5 and now that issue is resolved.
I need support please.
The plugin is not backing up my website when I select backup now.
The wordpress page shows no backup files after letting it run for an hour.
My S3 bucket has no files in it.
I am using Netfirms.com as a webhost.
It might have to do with your cron not running. Try going to yourdomain.com/wp-cron.php and see if that works.
Any idea why the General options pane wouldn’t show up? On one site it doesn’t exist.
Hmm, that’s strange. Anything different about that site?
Help,
I have several sites on IXWebhosting and cannot get Automatic WordPress Backup to work.
Installation went fine but it does not run.
Any help would be appreciated, I think this is a great plug-in — once it works.
Dennis
Try going to yourdomain.com/wp-cron.php and see if that works.
Hi,
I tried wp-crontab.php for my site and still no go!
any other ideas would be appreciated.
I removed and reinstalled the plugin and it works fine now.
thanks
Hmm, that’s strange. I wonder what it was. In any case, glad it’s working now. And thank you for keeping the credit link in place. It means a lot.
Hi,
I installed the Automatic WordPress Backup plugin, but after I entered my AWS access key and secret access key and clicked “save”, I received the error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function curl_init() in /home/living/public_html/wp/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 860
What might this mean and how can I correct it?
I’m using a Linux server running php 5.2.5
Thanks!
Michael
Michael, are you on a dedicated server? If so, your issue might be fixed by the next update we’ll be pushing out. I’ll get in touch with you once we’ve got that ready to go.
Hi Melvin,
I’m not sure but I’m pretty sure we have shared hosting. Is it possible that the plugin has to have CURL instaleed? I’m not sure our host has installed it, but if it’s possible that that’s the problem, I can get with him.
Thanks!
Michael
It’s possible. I’ll check in with my programmer and report back soon.
Hi,
I’m getting the same 860 error as well using a Cpanel Dedicated Linux server.
Is there a solution to make it work?
Hello,
Thanks for a great plugin — it works nicely. However I have to tell you that I have a real problem with the “powered by Web Design Company” link that your plugin automatically puts in the footer of my websites unless it’s deselected in the preferences.
I understand the need for credit where it’s due and am all for supporting quality plugins, but this link appears out of nowhere and makes it look like WDC is taking credit for building the entire site. Please consider revising your credit link text to indicate it’s the Auto Backup plugin that’s powered by WDC, not the entire site itself. Even something like “This site uses Automatic WordPress Backup, a plugin by Web Design Company” would be a lot better.
Dawn, I’ve responded to you directly via email.
No offense but this seems a bit of an over reaction, you get what you pay for. Its not that difficult to uncheck this option, not a big deal for a great plugin!
I responded privately to Mel via email, but wanted to say publicly that my comment wasn’t intended to be rude so I apologize if it seemed that way. I wasn’t accusing WDC of any dishonesty. My point was simply that even if there was no bad intent, the end result is–in my opinion–unnecessarily misleading and unfair to those of us who actually did build the entire site.
All I was asking is that WDC consider using more specific wording in the credit line to make it more clear that WDC created the plugin and not the entire site. Also, I think it would help to perhaps flag it a little more in the plugin setup page so people aren’t surprised when it shows up on their site.
Apologies, again, if what I meant to be constructive criticism came out more like a flaming. I agree it’s a great plugin worthy of support. Thanks for all your hard work.
Hi – any news on that 1.1.0 version? I’ve got this plugin working fine on several sites hosted on Hostgator, but another site on Hostgator refuses to work. I’ve done everything I can think of, and get no errors – but just get no backup either. The database backup appears in the Uploads folder, but no zipped file and nothing on S3. I’m hoping that v. 1.1.0 will fix it.
Please let us know! Thanks!
I did some testing on it this weekend and there are a few bugs we need to get sorted away before it gets released. It’s close.
Hi,
I installed the Automatic WordPress Backup plugin. How do I know if it is actually making backups?
On the Automatic WordPress Backup screen on my WordPress installation, I have entered the AWS Access Key and the AWS Secret Key. I created and assigned a bucket for S3, set the backup frequency to “daily” and checked all of the options. When I clicked “Save Changes and Backup Now”, I received a message that indicated the changes were saved successfully, but I have received no indication that it actually backed up anything.
Under the heading “Download recent backups”, there is no list of recent backups. I set everything up about a week ago. the next day, I clicked “Save Changes and Backup Now”, but now, 5 or 6 days later, there is nothing indicating that it is actually backing up the site.
My AWS account shows a 2 cent balance, apparently for 0.000012 GB of bandwidth.
I’m using a Linux server running php 5.2.5 (I previously reported a different issue, but that issue seemed to be resolved when our ISP installed CURL on the server.)
What can I do to verify whether or not it is backing up and if it’s not, what do I need to do?
Thanks!
Michael
hi – amazing plugin! am slightly confused by the options:
- Delete backups older than one month
–Keep a monthly backup for one year
–Keep manual backups forever
in the video you tick ALL of these…don’t the first two cancel each other out? or am i being obtuse?!!
thanks!
debs
If you tell it to delete backups older than a month, but keep the monthly backups, it’ll keep the first backup for each month going back a year, but clear out anything else over a month old. That way, you keep a history going back a year without having to keep each and every backup.
cheers! all clear now!
hi…i have another question! are there any security issues around storing wp-config.php and .htaccess files at S3? …or am i just being paranoid? is there some way we could encrypt these files with sensitive data? thanks!
No you are not being paranoid. It’s a good question to ask.
With S3, if they don’t have your access keys, they can’t reach your data. That is Amazon’s promise. So as long as you don’t share your access keys in a vulnerable place, you’ll be fine. Now this does mean that your web server itself needs to be secure… but if someone is able to get into your server, s3 will likely be the least of your worries. In any case, I recommend setting up a different S3 account to do your backups.
thanks melvin! a separate S3 account is a good idea…
I keep getting the message “It appears that your uploads folder isn’t writeable by the web server. Be sure that you set your permissions so that it can write to it.”
However the permissions on the uploads folder are set and a folder called awb has been created in there. Any ideas?
It sounds like you’re using the development version of the plugin, not the stable version.
If you go to your uploads folder, there is probably a folder called awb. You need to set permissions for that directory to 755. That is one of the bugs of the current beta version. It doesn’t automatically set the right permissions for that folder.
HI,
I’d already set the permissions to 755 and also 777 but to no avail still got the same problem… i wonder if it’s server related (also set the site to run php5)
Hi,
I installed the Automatic WordPress Backup plugin. How do I know if it is actually making backups?
On the Automatic WordPress Backup screen on my WordPress installation, I have entered the AWS Access Key and the AWS Secret Key. I created and assigned a bucket for S3, set the backup frequency to “daily” and checked all of the options. When I clicked “Save Changes and Backup Now”, I received a message that indicated the changes were saved successfully, but I have received no indication that it actually backed up anything.
Under the heading “Download recent backups”, there is no list of recent backups. I set everything up a few weeks ago. The day after I initially set it up, I clicked “Save Changes and Backup Now”, but there is still nothing indicating that it is actually backing up the site.
My AWS account shows a 2 cent balance, apparently for 0.000012 GB of bandwidth.
I’m using a Linux server running php 5.2.5.
What can I do to verify whether or not it is backing up and if it’s not, what do I need to do?
Thanks!
Michael
Hi, I’ve got the same problem as Michael above. Everything is apparently working, no errors on the plugin. Amazon S3 has a balance for $0.01 based on 19 requests. The useage report from Amazon is pretty terrible, although it looks like my only useage to date have been the ListBucket, ListAllMyBuckets, and CreateBucket functions.
No backup files are added to my uploads folder.
I’m not sure how recent the change is to the uploads folder to organise uploads by year and then month, perhaps that is a problem?
Currently running WordPress 2.9.2, PHP 5.2.11 on Linux
I just got everything working and I downloaded the zip to check out the contents. I found the backup database file:
Inside your zip, under wp-content > uploads > wp-s3-database-backup.sql
but it does not contain any posts. It is not like my manual backup of the database that produces a .sql file which contains all my posts. What am I missing?
That is ultra strange since both methods use the same DB dump approach. Our DB dump method is changing a lot with the next version so it might fix your problem. Hang tight for another week bud.
Hello,
I am getting the following error whenever I try to activate the plugin. I have php5, linux hosting on Godaddy and a writable “uploads” in my wp-content. Any ideas?
Fatal error: Undefined class name ‘self’ in
/home/content/y/o/g/yogababy/html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/automatic-wordpress-backup.php on line 86
Thanks
Matthew Forrest
I can’t get the plugin to work properly. Here are my issues:
If I have all boxes checked the backup won’t complete (not even a manual backup). Is my site too large? My database files are about 6mb. My content is probably around 50mb. AWS shows about a penny in charges, so there is some activity going on.
If I only check “Config file and htaccess” and leave database, themes, plugins, and uploaded content unchecked, the backup appears to be successful after several hours (overnight) of waiting. However, when I try to click the link to download the backup I get a “This Connection is Untrusted” error concerning the security certificate of AWS. It won’t allow me to open, download, or save the file. I’ve tried in Firefox and Safari.
Hi Melvin, did you miss my comment? I don’t see a reply from you. Do you need more information? I’m using Godaddy hosting.
Oops, I did. That sounds like the DB dump is having issues. Is that a shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server?
It’s their deluxe shared hosting account (linux).
Hi,
I’m not sure why the backup is not working… I’m getting this warning message (using wordpress 2.9.2 and PHP 5.2.8). Any idea, where it comes from ?
Warning: curl_setopt() [function.curl-setopt]: CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION cannot be activated when in safe_mode or an open_basedir is set in …/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 896
Thanks for the awesome extension
I have set it to weekly backups and noticed that it still is backing up on a daily basis and taking up way too much server space? Is there a solution for this? Website Host is Hostgator.
Hmm, that sounds odd. Once we’ve released the next version of the plugin, we’ll dig deeper into this issue. It would help if you setup a temporary website account on hostgator and email us FTP info so we can test it out and see what’s wrong.
Has any progress been made on fixing this? This is now happening (for me) on two of the three WordPress sites I’m running (all using WP3).
Regardless of what I set the frequency to, it does the backup every morning at the same time??
I don’t have an update for you yet. Dan is going to be working on the plugin this weekend and this coming week on other parts so I’ll see if he can figure out what’s going on with the scheduling.
Mine is doing the same — it’s set for weekly backups, but is saving daily at 2:45 PM (+/-0 a couple minutes). I tried setting it to monthly at one point and it still saved daily. WordPress Version 2.9.2, I think it’s a pretty standard installation.
Incidentally, minor point, it might make more sense to save at 2:45 AM, not PM, or have this configurable.
Thanks for the plugin, it’s a great idea.
why is my comment deleted? I was having problems on setting the backup to weekly because even if you set it it will still be in daily so space on s3 is wasted and bandwidth. Will you delete this comment again the second time?
Your comment wasn’t deleted. Comments go into moderation to filter for spam. Take a chill pill man.
I got this working on Lunarpages today.
Described here: http://wombatdiet.net/2010/03/03/wordpress-to-amazon-s3-backup/
with a suggestion: permit keeping last N backups
and a bug: the plugin didn’t like a pre-existing bucket (of mine)
Thanks
Nice write-up dude/dudette! And thanks for leaving the credit link in the footer. I’ll definitely keep your idea in mind as we move forward. It’s something I’ve been thinking about as well.
I also got this working on my Lunarpages-host website just this morning, using the tweeks that are described by Eats Wombats. Everything was backed up in my first manual backup. Great plugin! I’ll be writing my positive review soon on my blog.
Hey there,
When we download the backups (checking that they are saving ok) we’ve noticed our sql file is empty? Any ideas on how to fix that? We are hosting on Mediatemple (which I see is on your untested host list – don’t know if that’s the issue…)
Many thanks,
Daniel
Daniel,
The way version 1.x backs up the database has been totally replaced in the upcoming version 2.x.
Alright, the next version (v2.0) of the Automatic WordPress Backup plugin is ready and we need beta testers. Please visit http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup/automatic-wordpress-backup-v2-beta/ for more information.
I’m confused. What is the difference between this plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/
and this one?
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-s3-backups/
Both of them have Dan Coulter as the author.
That is the old version of the plugin. It was renamed to give it more flexibility and it has been dramatically been extended.
The one you want to use is:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/
I’m curious, so what does Dan Coulter have to do with either of these?
Also, with regards to the conversations on the WordPress support forums discussing how someone claims this plugin inserts a link for credit, how does it work? Is it mandatory or optional? I ask because I prefer to use a “Credits” page for all the plugins I use instead of random links automatically placed in my blog (as some would claim)
Nop, it’s not mandatory. It’s pretty easy to turn it off actually. We’d love it if you didn’t remove it but we don’t make it hard to remove. And a credits page would be awesome.
I’ve made the switch. Thanks for the awesome plugin! Here’s the link to my credits page. It uses a plugin to generate it:
http://thundercatownersgroup.com/about/credits/
Chalk up another Hostgator implementation over here. Plugin works great!
Thanks again!
I am using Cartika Hosting and the plugin page failed to load after installing. Any help would be appreciated.
Hi Tom, you’ll probably want to sign up for the beta of the new version that will be released on Friday.
You can see more info here: http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup/automatic-wordpress-backup-v2-beta/
Th new version fixes the most common problem people were having and adds a restore feature into the plugin.
Melvin,
At the risk of sounding like a totaly idiot, I have a simple question. I was able to use S3, GoDaddy hosting and your plugin like a breeze. Really nice work. The backup worked great. Here’s my question: Does this backup include all of my posts and pages? I saw it had my uploads, but I wasn’t sure about the other stuff. That’s my only concern.
Thanks for everything.
In your archive, it should contain a .sql file. Open this .sql file inside notepad or textedit. If it contains lots of stuff, than yes and everything is working for you. If you don’t have a .sql file or it is empty, the backup isn’t working correctly.
PS: The .sql file is basically a export of your database, which is where your posts, pages and other data is stored.
Donation will be forthcoming. Awesome stuff.
Thanks for the generous offer Jeff, though we don’t accept donations. We’d be really grateful if you wrote a review of the plugin and/or left the credit link on in the footer.
Hi, I was trying to backup my site to s3 but all I get is this text:
“It appears that your uploads folder isn’t writeable by the web server. Be sure that you set your permissions so that it can write to it.”
I have changed permission in uploads folder on 776.
And same. What am I doing wrong?
FYI, I got an email today from a theme company I’ve used before. They claim to have a new WordPress backup product now called “BackupBuddy”. It looks interesting BUT…it doesn’t backup to Amazon S3 which is critical for me. It also comes with a price tag.
Thanks for the heads up.
I’m glad they are trying to get into the market with a new product. The more people that are backing up the better.
PS: When you see how Automatic WordPress Backup v2.0 works, I think you’ll see how much more work they still have to do to catch up.
Got room for another beta tester? I can set up a blog under a sub-domain and backup/restore until the cows come home.
For sure. Just leave a comment on the beta page.
First of all thanks so much for this plugin. I installed it and signed up w/ Amazon and everything was very straightforward.
Now for some questions… I tried my first backup and am having 2 issues. 1st is that all it created in my uploads/awb folder was an .htaccess file, but nothing else. 2nd is that nothing is showing in my amazon account.
Would you have some suggestions for me? It’s been several minutes now so I would think that is long enough to expect the backup to be created (it’s a small site.)
Thanks.
Melvin,
I’ve installed and tested the v2.0-beta1 on my VPS. I can’t get it to backup anything. About all it can do is create buckets. It doesn’t even work when all other plugins are off. Can I please get your assistance to debug this? Here’s some of my specs:
host company: vpslink.com
OS: CentOS 5.3 (virtuozzo)
RAM: 512Mb
Apache: 2.2.11
PHP: 5.2.9
MySQL: 5.0.89-community-log MySQL Community Edition
Wordpress: 2.9.2
I installed the plug in with out any errors but when I do a manual backup the backup is never listed in WP and it is not sent to S3, The plug in seems to be able to see the different s3 bucket.
I have not had the plug in installed for 24 hours yet to see if it works for the auto-backup.
Steve
BackupBuddy does NOT work on RackSpaceCloud. 150 dollars wasted. I’ll use this one next time.
Hi,
I downloaded the WordPress Backup Online Plugin and created an account on Amazon S3.
I use wordpress 2.7.1 that I know is not a platform supported but for me at the moment is too complex (money and time) migrate the platform.
I installed the plugin and it seems to works. There was an issue about upload directory that is not writeble. I fixed it giving to uploads/awb 777 permissions.
The problem now is that I inserted access and secret keys and I did Save and Backup. No failures occures but when I refresh pages I do not see any backup.
I created also a S3 bucket name but I do not understand what is it.
Do you have any suggestion?
is there any chance to have this plugin working with 2.7.1. I installed it on 2.7.1 and no failures occur but when try to do a backup they do not appear in the list of backup. I wp-content/uploads no files are created.
Any suggestion?
For me at the moment is a problem migrate to 2.8
Downloaded, installed and set up my S3 account just fine. When I did a manual backup it appeared to work but now all my uploaded photos are missing from my posts. I removed the Automatic WordPress Backup folder via FTP (FileZilla) but photos are still missing (hundreds of photo by the way. Two or three per post). I received no error messages in fact I could download the zip file. It didn’t seem to take very much time to backup everything. I would have thought with all the photos it would have taken longer My host is FutureQuest. I’m very concerned here. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Tom
I have to add now that the side columns are missing too. Boy this is really hosed up. I really hope it’s not completely lost. I find it hard to believe that a backup plugin would mess a site up like this. It must have been something I did.
Hope it’s fixable.
That is the first time I’m hearing of something like this and it seems unlikely that the plugin would do that. Were you able to get things working again and identify the problem?
Yes, I got the site back by restoring my SQL database but ven after that the photos weren’t there. I had changed permission on the uploads directory per the instructions so it would be writable to 776 or 775 ( I can’t remember now). After I changed it to 755 all was well.
I think the idea of the S3 backup is great, especially if everything (including photos) would be backed up however I’m a little gun shy of trying it again.
Thanks,
Tom
*argh*
Plugin sounds very good, so I created an amazon-S3-account, installed the plugin and set it up.
clicking “save changes and Backup now” produces a message “Your manual backup has started.If it hasn’t yet, it will show up below once it’s completed the next time you view this page.” .. but…. NOTHING happens…
okay.. “nothing” is incorrect:
my S3-Account has a new Bucket called “mywebseite.de-backup” but it is empty…
so I deleted the plugin and installed your BETA
my settings are still there .. fine…
now I see, that after clicking “backup now” my UPLOADS-directory on my FTP-Server has a new dir called “awb”. In this dir is a .htaccess-file but nothing else…
PHP Version 5.2.10
memory_limit 65M
mysql 5.0.83
what can I do to get this plugin work?
I love the options “files and Database” and the S3-Connection is awesome.
DC
.
You might be interested in this
http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup/beta-2-support-requests/
Greetings,
I have a bit of a problem with your plugin, hope you can help me out :
When I try to save, the following error message is displayed :
Warning: curl_setopt() [function.curl-setopt]: CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION cannot be activated when in safe_mode or an open_basedir is set in /home/www/7fcf8ee5c5f09cbd666b77143eddf09f/web/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 896
The uploads folder is 777 and my S3 account is working properly… Any idea of what seems to be the problem ?
Thanks a lot,
Dushan
Try out the v2 beta. Might work better for you.
Hmmm, I don’t feel like using a beta on a production site…
Don’t you have any idea of what seems to be the problem with the error message quoted previously ?
I didn’t had that message on another blog. Hope you can help me there
All the best,
Dushan
I understand and I wouldn’t use it on your production site either until it’s out of beta.
The problem is fixed by the new version. The database connection component was completely changed.
What I would do if I were you would be to create a temporary throw-away wordpress site on the same host as you’ve got your production site on and see if the beta version works. That way once it comes out of beta, you can give it spin on your production site with more confidence.
Ok, i’ll do that. Thanks a lot !
Dushan
Hi,
I upgraded from 2.7.1 to 2.9.2 but plugin still not work. The problem is shell_exec api. My host service disable it for security reason. I noticed that shell_exec it is used to call zip command. Other plugin use zip libraries to do that (just 1 php file), why you do not use this strategy?
Is there someone can help replacing shell_exec in the code?
I’ll talk with Dan about this. Have you tried v2 beta? It might work better for you.
I spoke with Dan and this is what he had to say:
Using a PHP zip library is problematic because it eats up tons of memory. Basically, if PHP has a 32mb limit, you can’t zip up more than 32mb of files. I was using one before, but had to remove it in order to back up the upload directory as it doesn’t take much to use up all of your memory.
Hello,
could someone please tell me the relationship between this backup and “WP S3 Backup” as they both have Dan Coulter as the author?
Also, someone said that backup program “WP S3 Backup” doesn’t save your picture files. Is that true of this backup program too?
I mean does this WordPress Automatic Backup save just posts and comments type data or does it save all your themes, and plugins and widgets AND PICTURES and everything.
There appears to be good support here which is great.
However, if someone could allay my fears and answer my questions, that would be great!
Thanks so much.
Jupiter Jim
The ‘WP S3 Backup’ plugin is an older version of this plugin. We’ve really evolved it dramatically since that initial version. The name changed because we’ll be adding other storage options (FTP, Rackspace Cloud, etc) in the future and we didn’t want it to be limited.
And yes, it saves everything.
I’ve been using this plugin successfully on a couple of domains for a while and am very pleased (thank you!)
I have one, though, that is consistently proving to be a problem. The issue is that it doesn’t have the usual setup. Instead of WordPress being installed at the root, WP is installed in a subdirectory (/wp) and the root domain is redirected to it. So, for instance, the url to the admin looks like this:
http://chivalrytoday.com/wp/wp-admin
All the files that need to be backed up are in the subdirectory and I can’t seem to get this plugin to work. Is there a way to tell it to go to that directory instead of the root?
I’m not sure I understand your problem. I’ve got this website setup as a separate site inside the http://www.webdesigncompany.net domain… so it’s setup at http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup/ and the plugin works fine.
Do you want the plugin to backup everything inside both http://chivalrytoday.com/wp/ and http://chivalrytoday.com/ ?
I suppose most of person buy shared host service that should disable for security reasons shell_exec, system and other calls to os specific programs.
So here from a programmer point of view (also for portability on windows systems) is to use zip libraries and for directory larger than 32 Mb create more zips.
We want to keep things simple for everyone. Making multiple zips adds unnecessary complexity. So we’re going to stick with the current approach for now.
Hi
Great plugin that I’ve been using for a few weeks. Suddenly however it stopped working; the plugin keeps displaying “You need to select a valid S3 bucket. If you tried to create a new bucket, it may have been an invalid name.”
There may have been plugins updates in my WP but no WP update. The “S3 Bucket Name” drop-down menu is empty, and so is my list of recent backups in the plugin menu – however backups still occur based on my account contents I browse through the S3fox organizer Firefox plugin !
keep up the good work !
Best regards.
That is odd. Are there any other plugins that use S3 in your website? Maybe there is a conflict going on. Can you make a list of the plugins you’re using and post it here?
Well the case happens on several sites I manage, here are the (many) plugins activated on the one I found the error on:
All in One SEO Pack
Contact Form 7
CryptX
Dagon Design Form Mailer
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
Exclude Pages from Navigation
Flickr Manager
Google Analytics for WordPress
Google XML Sitemaps
Link to Post
Maintenance Mode
NextGEN Gallery
Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu
SexyBookmarks
Smart Youtube
WordPress Database Backup
Wordpress Portfolio Plugin
WP-Table Reloaded
WP Render Blogroll Links
WP Title 2
Best regards.
Melvin,
The installation video is very good. I give you an A-. Would love to give you an A, but I just can’t do that with the way you glossed over the Permissions Settings for the Upload folder. You ended up by saying basically that if WordPress has automagically created your “uploads” folder when you uploaded a picture, then it probably has the correct folder permissions settings!!!!
Well, that would have been fine except that NOW that you brought the subject up, I just GOTTA KNOW! Could you please just tell me exactly what the folders permissions settings are so I can set them up for the “uploads” folder using my FTP client?
For instance, should the permission settings be “775″ or “666″ or what.
Thanks so much for all the support you give here.
However, I would truly redo the video and add a 15 seconds about what the exact folder permission and / or file permissions are and how to set them. Otherwise this video just frustrates many people. You say something about Just make sure the server has permission to write to the folder or something like that. Well, most people don’t know what you are talking about or what the corresponding permission settings for that would be. They just need an exact three digit number on how to set the permissions and that’s it.
Thanks again, however, for all you do.
Sincerely,
Jupiter Jim
NOTICE: If you’re having problems if AWB, you should immediately go look at http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup/beta-2-support-requests/ because we’re doing debugging right now (literally as I’m typing this) so you can’t complain that it’s not working for you if you don’t the steps to help yourself.
I keep seeing everyone mention the Back Up now feature. For some reason I do not have this button. Am I missing something? Should it be next to the save button?
Any help would be great.
Figured it out. Had the wrong version. I searched for S3 Backup rather then “Automatic WordPress Backup.”
TY
It was a little bit complicated but eventually I have figured it out…
Hi,
Weird problem here – i do save changes and backup now and it works – i can see that at my s3 account – BUT there is nothing listed under Download Recent Backups (although there should be about 6 now)
Any ideas what can be causing this problem ? (its not the host because i have another blog by them and that worked fine)
…..and a suggestion for the next version – an email sent when the scheduled backup has completed would be good
thanks
I like your suggestion.
edit change the last comment – its created the bucket but no backup has taken place thats why nothing is listed – this is shown but nothing there.
AmazonS3
PutObject
Requests-Tier1
smilesblogbackup
04/26/10 12:00:00
04/26/10 13:00:00
3
any suggestions how i can debug this?
I’d recommend trying out the new beta. It’s ready for release but we’ll release it once I’d had a chance to clean up the UI a bit.
ok is the beta available to try ?
or do i have to be patient ?
There are no errors turning up in the log files, i have done anything more to debug uptil now
http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup/automatic-wordpress-backup-v2-beta/
Thought i’d already replied to this but i dont see anything here….
Anyway the v2 beta seems to working fine, everything being backed up – i have not tried a restore
but i live in hope that when necesary that will work too.
Nice work !
Sweet. Which host are you using so I can add them to the compatibility page.
hallo,
Using domainfactory – quite big in germany
http://www.df.eu
and a second To the author: An option to backup the entire wp-content folder would be very useful!
I’m having a strange problem… I’ve used Automatic WordPress Backup Version 1.0.2 on one site for some time, with great success, so I recently installed it on a second site (on the same server).
On the second site, the timestamps of backups are always wrong – In fact, they’re always shown as being 6 hours earlier than the real (local) time?
Again, both sites run on the same server?
WordPress (on both sites) knows (and displays) the local time correctly, as does the PHP date() function – Even browsing my buckets on S3 shows the correct timestamp. Only the “Automatic Backup” page shows the wrong timestamps (in the “Download recent backups” list).
Any ideas?
Tom,
I have the EXACT SAME PROBLEM. I have fixed the correct time (New York time) on my Dashboard>Settings>General page on my WordPress Blog hosted on Godaddy.com
However, the Backup always lists the time as 4 hours earlier. Example, I just did a backup at 11:08 PM and the backup says 7:08 PM. What the …?
Also, there is no backup file or folder or zip or anything inside my wp-content/uploads directory on the Godaddy shared server. Also on my Dashboard>WDC Options>Automatic Backup page, under plugin requirements it says “zip status: not found”.
What is bizarre is that backups are being made to my Amazon S3 bucket! Can anyone figure this out and or help me? Melvin, I submitted this problem earlier to be troubleshooted but never got a reply. I just resubmitted it today. This also happened on a client’s WordPress blog hosted on Godaddy, so the problem seems to be Universal. This is a popular host and I hope you guys can find the solution to this consistent problem. Thanks, Jupiter Jim
The files are not suppose to be stored on the host… just on Amazon S3.
Also on my Dashboard>WDC Options>Automatic Backup page, under plugin requirements it says “zip status: not found”.
“zip status: not found” is in RED TEXT. You said everything should be in GREEN text.
What should I do to get the zip status to be “found” in GREEN TEXT?
Any ideas about the “wrong time” issue that started this thread, Melvin?
Also, I just discovered that on the second (problematic) site, it’s doing backups to S3 daily, regardless of what I set “Backup schedule” to. Right now, for example, it’s set to “Monthly,” but doing backups every night. Previously, it was set to “Monthly,” and also doing them daily.
Strange that it works perfectly on the other site (same server), and both sites are running the same version of WordPress (2.9.2) and your plugin (1.0.2).
Thank you in advance for any suggestions.
Not sure exactly why this is happening but I’ll have my programmer take a look at it over the next week or so.
Ok, that’s what I thought.
So the only reason to change file permissions for the wp-content/uploads folder to 777 is so that the program can create the awb folder with the htaccess file in it, correct?
please note, I have another blog hosted on hostmonster.com However, when I use FileZilla FTP client and look at the folders for my blog jupiterjimsmarketingteam.com, I go to wp-content/uploads and there is nothing in the uploads folder either pertaining to these backups. However, this does backup properly AND I have restored from backups from S3 bucket on Amazon using this backup plugin and it worked great.
I am looking in the right place for these backup zip files or whatever backup files I’m supposed to find?
Thanks for you help.
Hello.
I can’t seem to get your plugin to activate. It errors out WP. My host is 1&1.
Is this a hosting thing or something wrong with my configuration?
Please advise.
Thank you.
Are you sure you’re running php5?
Ahhhh… 1&1 is running PHP 4.4.9.
Does this mean your product will not work?
It requires php5 so yes, it won’t work.
I modified the .htaccess file at 1&1 and your plugin now works PERFECTLY. Thank you!
Excellent. Be sure to check the contents of the backup file to make sure everything is backing up as intended.
On my Dashboard>WDC Options>Automatic Backup page, under plugin requirements it says “zip status: not found”.
“zip status: not found” is in RED TEXT. You said everything should be in GREEN text.
What should I do to get the zip status to be “found” in GREEN TEXT?
Melvin,
I have taken a screenshot of my Automatic WordPress Backup Dashboard. I then cropped it so you can see all the pertinent information.
Here it is for you to see:
http://energywithmaxgxl.com/2010/05/backup-dashboard-screenshot/
Could you please tell me how to fix this situation?
Thanks so much!
I really, really need your help because most of my clients use Godaddy and this is the ONLY good backup program that works with godaddy.com, so I need to make sure it’s fully functional.
Thanks, Thanks, Thanks.
I really, really need your help.
You are the only one who can figure this out.
Sincerely,
Jupiter Jim
Melvin,
please note that i submitted all the login ID and pw information you need to poke around in my blog to help me figure out what’s going on, oK?
Thanks,
Jupiter Jim
Hi guys,
Firstly, great plugin. I’ve been looking for an offsite backup solutions for my WordPress sites for a while now. This was so easy to install and set-up. Thanks.
Just one questions, how secure are the communications between my WordPress site and Amazon A3? Are the communications encrypted or they sent in plain text?
Thanks for your help.
Rob
Good question. I’ll have to ask Dan about this.
Hi, I recently installed the plugin, and followed the video step by step, however when I click Save Ch angesor Save Changes and Back Up it comes up with a warning “Warning: S3::listBuckets(): [NotSignedUp] Your account is not signed up for the S3 service. You must sign up before you can use S3. in /home/janemeig/public_html/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 87″
I have tried searching for this file on filezilla and nothing comes up. Also, even if it did i’m not sure I’d know what to input into line 87.
Do you have any instructions for such an error? I am currently with hostgator.
Thanks
Jane
Hi, I have just signed up for Amazon S3 and installed the auto wp backup plugin. After I put in the AWS Access key and secret key and click save I get this message:
Warning: S3::listBuckets(): [NotSignedUp] Your account is not signed up for the S3 service. You must sign up before you can use S3. in /home/kylevia1/public_html/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 87
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/kylevia1/public_html/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php:87) in /home/kylevia1/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 865
Is it possible that I am not properly signed up with Amazon S3? Can’t see why I wouldn’t be though, maybe there was an option I missed or something.
I’m using Just Host which is one of the untested hosts, so maybe the problem lies there.
Any suggestions to get the plugin working would be great.
Thanks,
Lewis
Seemed to fix the problem by deleting and reinstalling the plugin a few times. Or maybe it was just luck.
Could someone please tell me whereabouts on the Amazon S3 site I have to go to see the files that the plugin has backed up for me? Ive never used the S3 site before and am not too sure of the technical terms used. Does anyone also know the best way to restore a site using the backed up data?
Thanks,
Lewis
I’ll be making a video of this next week.
Hi,
I posted in the hosting compatibility page about a problem getting the plugin working on Rackspace Cloudsites but this is a better place for the topic.
The site I am having problems with is running 2.9.2 WP and the 2.0 plugin. It also uses the arthemia premium theme and is running WP Super Cache. On this site it says it is performing the backup and then reports it is finished but when I refresh there is no backup. There is also no data showing in the S3 bucket. I tried it several times and also reinstalled the plugin from scratch and tried again with same result. I waited overnight and still nothing.
Today I tried the plugin on another RS Cloudsites hosted WP install. This one was just freshly installed with the default WP theme. The plugin worked just fine – except that I can’t see a backup of the .htaccess file anywhere in my S3 bucket. Where should I find that??
So, it seems there is something up with my original site but not sure what. Could there be an issue with my theme or with running WP Super Cache? Are there any known plugin conflicts?
Would like to get to the bottom of this as it is such a nice solution and would apreciate any help.
Thanks … Daniel.
Hello there!
I’m trying to get this plug-in working for a client’s site but running into some issues. The requirements are all green (Debian, php5.2.0-8+etch16, uploads is 777 etc.); it connects to s3 fine and is able to read and create the buckets.
When I do a ‘Backup Now’, it claims that it is completed after about 5 seconds; which is odd considering it’s a 600mb+ backup. It creates the .zip folder on the server fine, though just never seems to push it to the s3 bucket. Nothing appears on the backup list, and I can’t see anything in my bucket using a bucket browser.
Have I missed something here at all? I’m running wp2.9.2.
Cheers for any help that you can provide!
Simon
Hey Guys,
Any thoughts on this – I’m in limbo.
My original site is still not working (the one with wp-super cache). The second site does manual backups OK (but no .htaccess) but is not doing the daily backups.
I installed on a third WP site on RS Couldsites and it is doing the same as the second – manual backups but no .htaccess and no daily backups working.
I am going to have to find another solution quickly if this doesn’t work.
Thanks.\
Daniel.
Hey, I tried the plugin but I got the following warning message.
Warning: S3::listBuckets(): [SignatureDoesNotMatch] The request signature we calculated does not match the signature you provided. Check your key and signing method. in /home/content/a/d/a/adam500/html/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 87
How do I resolve this matter.
Thank you guys.
have the same problem, how to handle this?
Same here. Any solution?
Can you verify there isn’t a space before or after the password or access key?
On this page http://drupal.org/node/508240 checking the password is what fixed it.
Absolutely spot on, Melvin. Thanks for the speedy reply. Worked like a charm.
When I press save changes and backup now in my plugin page in wordpress it takes me to a different webpage which contains:
Warning: S3::listBuckets(): [InvalidAccessKeyId] The AWS Access Key Id you provided does not exist in our records. in /home/content/a/d/a/adam500/html/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 87
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/a/d/a/adam500/html/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php:87) in /home/content/a/d/a/adam500/html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 868
Any clue on what I am doing wrong?
Sounds like the username and password for s3 are not correct.
Is there anyway to have it backup other folders as well that aren’t part of wordpress, but are in the same root?
Thanks,
Brian
Hey guys,
We recently installed your plugin on our WP blog and we were going to include a kudos to your site but before we could do it, one showed up at the foot of our site miraculously! I can’t locate the code anywhere to make it look better – at the moment, it is somewhat of an eye sore. I’d like to revise the style/design of it but I can’t find it in our code anywhere. Can you let me know where I could find this in the WP files please? Either that or remove it, and I’ll add a more appropriate one to our footer. BTW, great plug in!
Thanks!
Clayton.
In the left menu, click on WDC Options and you should be able to turn it off from there.
Strange things happening w/ the plug-in.
On the S3 Settings page, there is only one button, “Save Changes”. No button to “Save Changes and Backup Immediately”
In /public_html/wp-content/uploads, I get the following files:
A 1 KB Zip file
A 6.51 MB SQL file
Nothing ever shows up in Amazon S3
Have you tried v2 beta?
Melvin,
It’s worth a shot. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Melvin,
No Joy. Un-installed the old version & the installed the beta. The “Save Settings & Backup Now” button did appear this time but when I clicked it, I got the following message:
Script execution halted: Cannot redeclare class S3 — 64
Do all the requirements in the plugin requirements panel show green?
Melvin,
Yes they are.
Server OS Linux Linux (or compatible)
PHP Version 5.1+ 5.2.13
Uploads Folder Exists and writeable
curl Installed
shell_exec Enabled
zip Installed
Hi,
After following all the instructions I’m getting the following error message when I hit Save Changes.
“You need to select a valid S3 bucket. If you tried to create a new bucket, it may have been an invalid name.”
“No bucket was created. You may have entered a bucket name that already exists on another account.”
I see a few other users have experienced the same problem. Wondering of you could shed any light on this?
Thanks,
S.
Just got it working after I opened an Amazon EC2 account and created a bucket with S3hub.
Cheers,
S.
hi! have just realised that on most (not ALL) of my websites even though i have the “Delete backups older than one month” box checked the automatic backups are NOT actually being deleted…anybody else having this issue? not a major problem as i can manually do that at amazon and storage is cheap but any thoughts/suggestions are welcome, thanks!
I’ll have a look into that Debs. A couple others have mentioned this behavior so it might be a bug.
On my Dashboard>WDC Options>Automatic Backup page, under plugin requirements it says “zip status: not found”.
“zip status: not found” is in RED TEXT. You said everything should be in GREEN text.
What should I do to get the zip status to be “found” in GREEN TEXT?
I have taken a screenshot of my Automatic WordPress Backup Dashboard. I then cropped it so you can see all the pertinent information.
Here it is for you to see:
http://energywithmaxgxl.com/2010/05/backup-dashboard-screenshot/
Could you please tell me how to fix this situation?
Thanks so much!
I ran backup successfully and it stores on Amazon S3… When I restored the database through GoDaddy’s My SQL console, it was “NOT SUCCESSFUL”… What am I doing wrong?
What ersion of AWB were you using? Also, I’m not familiar with the GoDaddy console. Is it the PhpMyAdmin console?
Hi there,
Just checked in the Automatic Backups on my site and it had been successfully creating a backup everyday until May 25th. Nothing since, even though I havent changed a thing.
My Amazon account is upto date and available but even when I try to do a manual backup it says it’s doing it but nothing appears.
Any ideas?
Scrap that, it seems when you deactivate the plugin, it doesnt save changes so now I saved them again it’s back working! Cheers!
Glad you got it working.
Hi
I’ve just started using this cool plugin and all seems to be working fine except for one small query?
the database dump is in a folder called ‘uploads’ is this correct? or is the database not backing up?
Thanks
Nick
If you see a .sql file in there, that’s the db dumb.
I posted on here a couple of days ago that my automatic backups weren’t happening anymore. I thought I had sorted it by just re saving my settings but unfortunately it is’t happening at all.
Should this plugin show up as a scheduled cron job? I can’t see it listed on things to do or would it not show as that with it using Amazon WS?
Does it need an update for WP 3.0
It all worked fine back in May but has recently stopped doing automatic back ups.
It might need updates for WP3. I haven’t tested with WP3 yet. We’ll be doing some testing the next couple weeks or so.
Hi, I’m supporting a proposal to create a new Q&A website for wordpress developers and administrators. If you write plugins or themes, or administer your own WordPress site then this is the site for you. It’s built on the same software as stackoverflow.com, a hugely popular site where over seven million programmers help each other with difficult programming problems. On Stack Overflow the audience votes for the best answer, so the answer you want is usually right at the top, not on page five. I’m hoping that a site for wordpress developers and administrators would have the same kind of network effect and turn into an amazing resource. Click on my name to go to the proposal process. If you’re interested in participating, go there and click on the green “Commit” button.
What the hell are you doing putting a link on my site pages without permission?
Satisfactory answer ASAP please
I’m not the developer or involved in this plugin in anyway. But I can tell you that, just like most other plugins, there is a credit link automatically generated by the plugin.
You can easily disable it by going into your WordPress admin screen, go to WDCOptions>>General and click the “I’ll show my support by writing a review, donating or contributing” and save changes.
Or, you can uninstall the plugin and try to find another free plugin that offers half the features this one does. Good luck with that.
Apologies, I’ve just found where I can choose – not enough sleep, young baby, stress, bite generous WordPress developer, apologise, how many more times…
Reviews soon
Nick
I have uploaded the plugin on 2 sites and it appears to be saving the backups in the aws. However, I cannot see anything in the wp content/uploads folder. I use Hostgator on a shared hosting. Bit reticent to use 777 as I can already upload images just with 755 – isn’t 777 supposed to present more of a security risk?
Did you try 775 first?
Is v2 Beta working with WP 3.0?
Also, when is v2 expected to be a public release, and out of Beta?
AWB v2 beta hasn’t been test with WP3. I expect v2 to be released before end of July. Maybe sooner. We’ve just been swamped with client work.
Hello.
I signed up for the Amazon services but when I put my keys into the settings I get this:
Warning: S3::listBuckets(): [RequestTimeTooSkewed] The difference between the request time and the current time is too large. in ***/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 87
I created a bucket manually but that doesn’t show in the setting page.
I am running WP3 and PHP5.
Thanks.
-
Ezra
Hi, I am getting the same error message and one more on the same run:
==========
Warning: S3::listBuckets(): [RequestTimeTooSkewed] The difference between the request time and the current time is too large. in /home/bjjjcom/public_html/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 87
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/bjjjcom/public_html/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php:87) in /home/bjjjcom/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 890
==============
Is there a fix or a workaroiund?
I have your plugin working great on several sites – thanks a bunch for the awesome work!
A suggestion for future development – the only thing I find missing is some kind of notification that it is successfully backing up. The only way for me to be sure it is continuing to work is to periodically remember to go into S3 and check to see if the files are there. It would be awesome if you could set it to automatically send you an email each time a backup is completed or something.
I have had this plugin working on a site, then later find out it had stopped, which is part of the problem. Although it seems to be working fine on most sites now (have 1 or 2 problem children), it concerns me that I wouldn’t know if it stopped working.
Something to think about for future. Thanks again for the awesome plugin!
Point taken. This is a feature I’d like as well. Look for it in a future version.
Okay – the problem children. I have 2 sites that I cannot get to work with this plugin. I have several other sites that work on the same server (Hostgator), plus I have tried other backup plugins and they don’t work either, so I think it is something about the site itself.
One is dontforgetdelicious.com. Dont Forget Delicious has a standard root setup.
The other is chivalrytoday.com. Chivalry Today’s setup is at chivalrytoday.com/wp/
What can I do to figure out what the problem is?
I can’t say what is going wrong just by looking at the site. You’ll need to describe your problem in more detail or fill out
http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup/beta-2-support-requests/
Well, there’s not much to describe. It just doesn’t work. It gives no error, goes through the motions, but no backup file link ever appears, nothing shows up in the A3 folder, etc. Just… nothing.
I will submit to the beta support request. But if there is anything I can do to try to figure out the problem without having to use up your programmer resources, let me know.
Is this on WP3? or 2.8/2.9?
Dontforgetdelicious.com is currently at 2.9.2. I’m trying to get a good backup before I update! lol.
Chivalrytoday.com is now on 3.0, but it didn’t work with 2.9.2 either.
I don’t know if this is the right place for this but I have a feature request for AWB:
Right now the access ID/key are obfuscated in the plugin settings pages yet stored they’re in plaintext in the database. If a malicious user got their hands on a database using this plugin they could could access and tamper with, and/or delete the contents of the associated S3 account.
Imagine how crappy that would be! “My site has been hacked? That’s fine – I’ll just grab the latest good copy of everything from S3. @$#@^$!”
If this were hashed it would make it much more difficult and ideally give the compromised database owner time to change their S3 keys before someone had time to break the encryption.
Doing this would also make this plugin better suited for multi-site backups to a shared S3 account.
My programing expertise is nowhere near that of Dan’s but I have a feeling that encrypting the ID/key values in the database would be simple since it’s done so often. Perhaps as easy as borrowing WordPress’ in-built “PHPass” system for storing passwords….who knows?
Anyways, Just a suggestion!
-Jared
I’ll have Dan think about this. It might not be possible since we can’t simply hash it since the key needs to be ‘unhashed’ each time the s3 connection is made and any decent hacker would be able to easily unhash it. Anyway, we’ll discuss it.
Hi Melvin,
Thank you so much for your plugin. I´ve installed it in a new WP 3.0 with multisite enable. I´ve configured it with a new bucket and it seems to be working, but now I see the plugin is not activated in subfolders installation (mainsite.com/blog1 mainsite.com/blog2 etc) Do I need to installed them in all of them? Does it work with subdomains too? Have you run any tests? If you didn´t we can try with mine.
Thanks
we haven’t tested on WP3 yet.
are we supposed to change the .htaccess file to htacess.txt or something like that? I haven’t tried to troubleshoot this plugin in a while and can’t remember if that was for this plugin or another.
On my Dashboard>WDC Options>Automatic Backup page, under plugin requirements it says “zip status: not found”.
“zip status: not found” is in RED TEXT. You said everything should be in GREEN text.
What should I do to get the zip status to be “found” in GREEN TEXT?
I have taken a screenshot of my Automatic WordPress Backup Dashboard. I then cropped it so you can see all the pertinent information.
Here it is for you to see:
http://energywithmaxgxl.com/2010/05/backup-dashboard-screenshot/
Could you please tell me how to fix this situation?
Thanks so much!
Jim, Melvin
Is there any answer to Jim’s question? I’m having the exact same problem.
What should I do to get the zip status to be “found” in GREEN TEXT? It looks like Jim has asked this question on July 1, June 14th, May 8, May 3?
Thanks.
see reply below
Hi Jim,
It means that it’s not able to find a program called zip on your server. This usually for one of two reasons:
1) It’s not there.
2) It can’t find it because it doesn’t support the ‘which’ command or shell_exec isn’t working.
If the plugin is able to make the zip, it’s probably the second reason and you should ignore the red text. We’re going to make some changes to how we determine whether it’s there to reduce the false positives on that.
If it’s not able to make zip files, you’ll need to install a zip program for your flavor of linux. The best bet is to google ‘install [your flavor of linux] zip’ and it will give you various helper pages.
Thank you for your reply Melvin
Hi Melvin,
I’m currently running WordPress 3.0 and have installed AWB 1.0.2. Everything seems to be set up properly and I’ve scheduled the backups to take place weekly. However, to make sure everything was working fine I tried a manual backup by clicking on “Save Changes and Backup Now”. A part from a message telling me the download will show when I refresh the web page, nothing happens. No backup file is generated, neither in the ‘wp-content>uploads’ folder neither in my Amazon S3 bucket.
Hope you can fix this soon!
Best regards,
Olivier.
How to instal from a back up ?
Check out http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup/automatic-wordpress-backup-v2-beta/#comment-312
I’m anxious to get this to work as it’s just what I need for my sites. But I’m having a problem similar to others who have posted here. I enter the key pair from AWS and I get the error “You need to select a valid S3 bucket. If you tried to create a new bucket, it may have been an invalid name.” I’ve tried creating the bucket in my S3 account and creating one from within the plugin settings. In both cases I get the same error.
Interestingly I get the error when I deliberately enter the wrong Secret Key (by changing a few characters). Does this mean the Key pair is wrong? Is there any other way I can troubleshoot this problem?
It might be that you’re creating a bucket with a name that already is in use by someone else. For example, if I have a bucket named ‘something’ and you try to create a bucket named ‘something’, it’ll throw an error. Try a different name and let me know if the problem still exists.
Hmmm. It doesn’t even display the buckets that I’ve created from within AWS.
Trying to install and getting errors:
Warning: S3::listBuckets(): [NotSignedUp] Your account is not signed up for the S3 service. You must sign up before you can use S3. in /homepages/7/d179976026/htdocs/400caloriesorless/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 87
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /homepages/7/d179976026/htdocs/400caloriesorless/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php:87) in /homepages/7/d179976026/htdocs/400caloriesorless/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 868
I am signed up for S3 and I have entered the 2 keys. I have tried several bucket names (ones I am sure are most probably not in use). Help. please !!!
Worth mentioning…
The plugin wasn’t working even though I’d set all permissions correctly. No backups occurred.
Our website is not yet live and requires a user/pass to access. Making the website public triggered backups.
If your backup is not working make sure your site is publicly accessible.
Thanks for letting everyone know David.
Hey!!
Firstly, I would like to thank you for such a great website which is full of resources. Thank you very much.
With regards to your backup plugin, is there any way of making it possible to email the back-up to an email address? I have a backup gmail account which I use for backing up my site.. and I think it would be a great alternative for those of us who would prefer having it emailed.. (Cheaper, more convenient)
I am not too good with WP coding, but from my knowledge of PHP I don’t think it would be that hard to alter the the code to change it from uploading the file to S3 as opposed to uploading and sending by email.
What do you think?
Thank you for your time.
Cheers,
Abdul
We’re going to add a number of storage mechanisms in the future. I don’t have an ETA for you just yet.
OK coool. I can’t wait to see that
Cheers Melvin
Hi Melvin,
Would you please let us know when you plan to support WordPress 3.0.
Thank you.
Cheers,
Olivier
Soon is all I can say.
working fine for me with WordPress 3.0 on manual backups…not sure about scheduled…will let you know…
Hi, I’m testing your nice plugin on WP 3.0 but it doesn’t work.
It can connect to S3 (i can create buckets via the plugin and can see these on my S3 account) but the backup are non running.
I can’t see any backup file il my wp-contents/uploads foders (that il 777, writeable/readeable)
No errors are noted on the plugin settings page; PHP Version : 5.2.13 / 64Bit OS
May you help me?
Andrea
Andrea, are you using the beta version of 2.0? If not, check out:
http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup/automatic-wordpress-backup-v2-beta/
Hi,
I’m sorry, it’s my fault.
My provider doesn’t allow shell execution, because I have a shared hosting. So I can’t use your nice plugin
There are a number of shared providers that do.
The unthinkable happened and I need to affect a restore.
I’ve downloaded and unzipped the backup file from Amazon S3; and am uploading wp-content folder.
How do I get the .SQL file into the WordPress database? If it’s important, the site is hosted by HostGator.
[Regrets, I've looked all over this site trying to find DOCs before making this post.]
Many thanks…for the help and the great plugin.
PS: I read the “No Donations” entry…where would you like a testimonial posted?
Oh no. Well, I’m glad you’ve got backups. The answer of how to restore depends on if you were using 2.0 beta or the older version.
If you were using the 2.0 beta, here’s the steps you’ll follow:
* If it’s possible, download whatever you still have on your server so you have a manual backup of whatever is currently there.
* If it’s possible, download a copy of the current mysql database.
* Delete the old files from your website server.
* Install a fresh copy of WordPress.
* Install the Automatic WordPress Backup 2.0 beta plugin
* Activate it and enter the info for your s3 account.
* Once you do, go to Restore, and select the date you’d like to restore back from.
* Click Restore
* When it asks whether to user the new db info, click yes and click Restore/Continue
* It will take some time but now it’ll download the files from s3 and the database and restore the info into your new current wordpress database
If you weren’t using the 2.0 beta, follow this instructions:
* If it’s possible, download whatever you still have on your server so you have a manual backup of whatever is currently there.
* If it’s possible, download a copy of the current mysql database.
* Login to your s3 account using a client such as the s3 online manager or the firefox s3 extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247/) and download the version of the website that you’d like to restore back to.
* On your website server, delete the existing files.
* Install fresh version of WordPress
* Upload the files from your backup. That gets your files restored.
* From your hosts control panel, look for something called the PHPMyAdmin (which is your mysql’s website interface.)
* Login to PHPMyAdmin
* Click your database name on the left
* Click Import
* Select your sql file and click Go. That will get the database restore.
* Now go back to your WordPress site. It’ll probably ask for your permission to upgrade the database if the current version is older than the backup version. Click Yes.
* You’re done.
Never mind!
It’s amazing what you can find when you read the manual.
The WordPress Codex has this: http://codex.wordpress.org/Restoring_Your_Database_From_Backup.
Followed their steps and everything is back to the way it was.
Thank you for this great tool!
Great! Glad you go it working. As for the testimonial, anywhere you want to write a review (such as your blog/website) works for us.
Hi Melvin, I absolutely love your plugin. it’s so simple
The only problem is, I’m using the 2.0 beta with wordpress 3.0, and it’s says zip isnt installed. I’m on the new godaddy grid hosting.
and I have SSH access, how would I go about installing zip?
I’m having trouble getting the plugin to work on byethost.com and rackspace cloud servers. I don’t get any error messages, but it just never seems to do anything. I’ve seen some other comments about rackspace cloud, but there wasn’t any conclusion. How can I troubleshoot this?
I’ve found that the zip file is being generated just fine, but for some reason it’s never being uploaded to S3. What should I check next?
Are you using 2.0 beta? A lot of issues related to dedicated servers and Rackspace Cloud Servers were resolved with the 2.0 beta.
You can find out more at:
http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup/automatic-wordpress-backup-v2-beta/
I’m not. Just the version that automatically installs in wordpress, but it’s now working. I’m not sure why I had to mess with it a while. I may have missed the permissions at first. thanks for your reply.
Cool. Glad it’s working now. Be sure to check in on the backups for a few weeks to make sure it’s continuing to do the backups. And when you’re happy with it, hope you’ll review it somewhere.
I’ve already written a review. I use it on a bunch of sites, but this was the first time on rackspace and I might have fumbled it.
Here’s my review:
http://www.danielwatrous.com/how-to-backup-your-wordpress-blog
Hi – I’m seeing an error with the plugin on two sites. I duplicated the first site on another domain, but I don’t see how that would make the first site’s plugin install start failing as well. The first one cannot pull the bucket list or the the previous downloads. The second site cannot pull the bucket list or create a new one or do a backup. The errors are below. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Warning: S3::listBuckets(): [6] Couldn’t resolve host ‘s3.amazonaws.com’ in /home/gremedy/gentleremedies.net/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 87
Warning: S3::getBucket(): [6] Couldn’t resolve host ‘gremediesbackup.s3.amazonaws.com’ in /home/gremedy/gentleremedies.net/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/S3.php on line 132
Warning: krsort() expects parameter 1 to be array, boolean given in /home/gremedy/gentleremedies.net/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/automatic-wordpress-backup.php on line 248
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/gremedy/gentleremedies.net/wp-content/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/automatic-wordpress-backup.php on line 250