The latest updates for UpdraftPlus 1.16.30 update has now been released. This latest version has various performance tweaks and bug fixes to make UpdraftPlus backups better than ever.

One of the main performance improvements for the latest update is for websites/hosts. Where mysqldump is disabled, UpdraftPlus will now extract database data via the primary key (where one is available). This improvement results in a substantial performance increase when fetching large tables using PHP.

We have also undertaken various fixes when importing settings into UpdraftPlus. These include the fixing of an issue that caused all database tables that were not selected, to be backed up in a “Backup Now” backup during a resumption. Additionally some under the hood improvements have been implemented to allow faster booting of UpdraftClones in the future.

The change-log for the latest update is as follows:

• PERFORMANCE: Where a table has a numerical primary key, extract its data using that index. This results in a substantial performance increase when fetching large tables using PHP. (The filter updraftplus_can_use_primary_key_default can be used to de-activate this behaviour)
• FIX: Remove incorrect decodeURIComponent() parsing when importing settings, which could prevent import of settings containing some special characters
• FIX: An issue where database tables that were not selected to be backed up in a “Backup Now” backup would get added to the backup during a resumption (i.e. if it did not finish in a single run)
• TWEAK: Catch errors from Google Cloud when the bucket is not found
• TWEAK: Fix undefined variables instead of expected values in message prior to settings import
• TWEAK: Strip the redundant WHERE for the –where parameter to mysqldump (which modern versions strip out, but a version was found that didn’t)
• TWEAK: Handle hosts that have disabled the session_id() function
• TWEAK: Provide SQL mode information in the ‘Site Information’ section under the ‘Advanced Tools’ tab and in the database backup’s header
• TWEAK: Show a notification of UpdraftPlus plugin updates even if the associated user account is not connected to the UpdraftPlus website
• TWEAK: Add mechanism to detect what hosting provider is being used and use it to make UpdraftPlus comply with Kinsta’s backup limit policies (thus removing it from the list of disallowed plugins)
• TWEAK: When booting a clone if it’s claimed from the clone queue then update the token being used
• TWEAK: Tweaked downwards the minimum time in the future for rescheduling a resumption

The post UpdraftPlus 1.16.30 Update Released appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

UpdraftPlus has lots of options when it comes to backing up to a remote storage location.We recently updated the instructional videos for several of the most popular remote storage options, including Azure, RackSpace, Amazon S3, DropBox, Microsoft OneDrive and Microsoft Cloud.    

Our newest instructional update video is for the BackBlaze remote storage option. You can open a free BackBlaze account today and receive 10GB of free storage. Just watch the short video below for all the information you need on connecting your accounts. 

Written instructions on how to add BackBlaze to your UpdraftPlus backup account can also be found here.

The post How to add BackBlaze to your UpdraftPlus account settings appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

As an experienced PHP Developer, I have more often or not used WordPress when working on my web projects. Like many other developers, I have started to lose the same level of excitement I used to have when working within its rigid structure, as I found it has restricted form and limited functionality over time.

Recently however, I found a WordPress boilerplate called ‘Bedrock’ – which was created by the guys from Roots that pleasantly surprised me. It works by allowing the user to leverage a modern day development workflow that can help speed up your development process.

In this blog, we will go through the steps to set-up Bedrock for WordPress development. Throughout this tutorial, I will be using and referring to the Windows OS only. When working on other operating systems, the steps to set-up the document root will differ slightly, but everything else should be broadly similar.

Installation of Bedrock
Using a Windows computer with XAMPP already set-up, install Bedrock to begin setting up the WordPress boilerplate for development. We’ll use Composer to create our project, so make sure it is installed on your system before proceeding.

To create the project using Composer, head over to your htdocs directory from the command line and run the following command:

composer create-project roots/bedrock

This command creates a bedrock folder inside the htdocs. You can also pass the directory name as follows:

composer create-project roots/bedrock DIRECTORY_NAME

If you jump into your project directory, you will notice a few files such as;
.env, composer.json have been created. There is also a pre-filled .gitignore file with all rules defined already in it.

Next, go to the project directory in the terminal window/command line and install the dependencies using the command:

composer install

This installs all the dependencies required for the development and adds them inside the vendor folder created on your project’s file system.

We are now done with the installation, so let’s go ahead and configure Bedrock.

Bedrock setup and configuration

Start with the document root set-up on your OS for the Bedrock project.

Open xamppapacheconfextrahttpd-vhosts.conf in your text editor to configure the virtual hosts.

Add the following to the end of the file.

</em>
<em>&lt;VirtualHost *:80&gt;</em>
<em>DocumentRoot "D:/xampp/htdocs"</em>
<em>ServerName localhost</em>
<em>&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;</em>

<em>&lt;VirtualHost *:80&gt;</em>
<em>DocumentRoot "D:/xampp/htdocs/bedrock/web"</em>
<em>ServerName bedrock.local</em>
<em>&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;</em>
<em>

Here I have entered the directory path of the project – i.e. “D:/xampp/htdocs/bedrock/web” You can adjust this path as per your XAMPP setup.
Next, we need to make a small change to the Windows system file.

Open C:WindowsSystem32driversetchosts in the Notepad application.
Be sure you have opened the Notepad application with administrator access to make this change. To do this, Right-click on the App icon > Run as administrator.

Add the following lines to the end of the file.
</em>
<em>127.0.0.1 localhost</em>
<em>127.0.0.1 bedrock.local</em>
<em>

Note that I passed ‘bedrock.local’ as the local IP address with the same string (‘bedrock.local’) added in the ‘httpd-vhosts.conf’ file and it is mapped to my project directory path. If I now run bedrock.local on the browser it will point to the project directory that is associated with the above steps.
The final step in our setup is to create an empty database for our website and add its credentials in the .env file.

You can find this file in the root directory of the project.

Open the .env and add the DB Credentials as constants.
DB_NAME=bedrock

DB_USER=ADD_DB_USERNAME

DB_PASSWORD=ADD_DB_PASSWORD
Also, add the WP_HOME URL & the salt key (You can generate a salt key at https://roots.io/salts.html)
</em>
<em>WP_HOME=http://bedrock.local</em>
<em>

Keep the rest of the document as is, save and close the file.
Restart the Apache server and go to the URL: http://bedrock.local in your browser. It should redirect you to the famous 5-minute WordPress installation.
How to use Bedrock for WordPress development
We have so far learned how to install and set-up Bedrock, so let’s see how we can use Bedrock to develop a WordPress project.
In a default WordPress installation, the themes and plugins folder are found inside the ‘wp-content’ directory. With Bedrock, they are situated inside the ‘web/app’ folder. To set-up themes or plugins for Bedrock, add your theme(s) in ‘web/app/themes/’ and your plugins in the ‘web/app/plugins’ directory.
Using Composer, you can install the plugin as follows:
composer require wpackagist-plugin/updraftplus
Here ‘updraftplus’ is a slug of a plugin. This means you just need to use the ‘slug’ and Composer will install the plugin for you. There is no need to follow the manual process for installing plugins as you can search for the plugin packages on WordPress Packagist.
This concludes our quick tutorial on how to setup Bedrock – a very useful tool to manage your development. I recommend using it for all your upcoming WordPress developments.
Please share your thoughts or suggestions in the comment section below.
Sajid Sayyad
The post Setup Bedrock for WordPress Development on Windows OS appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

Backing up your website to the remote storage location of your choice is something UpdraftPlus have put a lot of time and effort into working on. We currently have a wide-range of supported remote storage options including Google Drive, Amazon S3 and DropBox.

Another remote storage option UpdraftPlus supports is Microsoft Azure. You can create a free Azure account for 12 months that offers users a wide choice of free Azure products and includes 5GB of LRS-Hot Blob Storage with 20,000 read and 10,000 write operations.

While connecting an Azure account may not be quite as simple as Google Drive, by following our easy to understand ‘step-by-step’ instructional video below, you can start backing up your website to Azure in next to no time. 

The post How to add Microsoft Azure to your UpdraftPlus account settings appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

We are excited to announce we’ve sold our MetaSlider business to Extendify.

Kevin, the lead developer who’s helped build MetaSlider to what it is today, is moving with the plugin and continuing to work on it with the new owners.  You can find more info on their plans for MetaSlider here.

It’s been great working with this excellent plugin over the last three years and seeing lots of new features released.  It was also very satisfying to see it transforming thousands of sites, including high profile customers such as NASA; who purchased MetaSlider Premium to power their space education pages on NASA.gov.

Extendify will, of course, honour all existing support arrangements, GDPR agreements, and licenses.

We’re confident it’s in excellent hands with the vision to take it to the next level, and maintain its position as the most popular WordPress slider plugin, whilst we focus more on our backend plugins such as UpdraftPlus, EasyUpdatesManager, and WP-Optimize.

The post UpdraftPlus announces MetaSlider is now sold to Extendify appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

The latest updates for UpdraftPlus 1.16.28 have now been released. This latest version comes with two main new features and several tweaks and fixes. The first new feature we are releasing with UpdraftPlus 1.16.28 is that users can now back up and restore MySQL and MariaDB routines. Backing up these stored routines means that users do not need to keep reissuing the individual statements, but can refer to the stored routine instead. 

The second new feature gives users the ability to search and replace the database via WP-CLI. Having this search and replace option will come in very handy when users need to change a site’s URL for example, or make another change of frequently appearing text inside your WordPress database. This new feature will save users lots of time when compared to manually updating any changes or creating a raw MySQL query to carry out the same action.

We recommend the update for all users.

The change-log for UpdraftPlus 1.16.28 is as follows. 

1.16.28

• FEATURE: Support backing up and restoring MySQL/MariaDB routines (stored procedures and functions)
• FEATURE: Added the ability to search and replace the database via WP-CLI
• FIX: Bit fields in a table don’t necessarily get backed up correctly due to the difference in the output of mysql_query() and mysqli_query() for the bit-field type
• FIX: Allow single multisite sub-sites to be restored when there is a http/https mismatch between the site and database backup
• TWEAK: Update plugin updates checker dependency (in paid versions) to the 4.10 series, improving compatibility with WP 5.5+’s updates management
• TWEAK: Suppress message about how to upgrade an already-installed plugin when on WP 5.5+ (where it is no longer relevant)
• TWEAK: Internal refactoring to allow more flexibility when creating database backups
• TWEAK: Force the turning off of ANSI_QUOTES in the active SQL mode when creating a backup, for better compatibility
• TWEAK: Add the ability to configure the ‘max_allowed_packet’ option in the binary mysqldump command via the ‘UPDRAFTPLUS_MYSQLDUMP_MAX_ALLOWED_PACKET’ constant
• TWEAK: The Google Drive options exist condition to prevent a false positive saved settings error
• TWEAK: Improve the UpdraftPlus get_outgoing_ip_address method in finding user webserver’s IPv6 address
• TWEAK: Removed MetaSlider notice in the notices collection

The post UpdraftPlus release latest 1.16.28 version appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.