Upgrade suggestion

[Square Wheels]

The ability to upgrade with one click seems a little too simple.  What happens if the upgrade bombs out in the middle?  It's always recommended that users backup their files and database before upgrading.

Would it be possible to build that into the upgrade button?  I would definitely be more willing to upgrade regularly if it were an easier process.  What I do now is turn site off, backup database, backup files, try upgrade from ACP, often fails, download files from client area, upload files, run upgrade, test site, turn site on.

I'm sure it sounds like a simple task from a non-programmer (me), but it sure would be a great option.

[Lindy]

Using PHP to perform a backup, especially on a moderate to large site, is just not a terribly good idea. It's a cool idea of course, but backups should really be performed on a system level; not a web application level. There's a reason the auto upgrader didn't work for many initially... it's because server configurations and permissions would not allow the PHP process to write files where they needed to be. An FTP fallback method was introduced to account for this, but trying to use that for a backup method would be extremely "hacky" -- potentially even disastrous.

I would add two other things to this: 

1. Surely you don't only backup when it's time to upgrade? I assume your site is backed up at least daily by your host. Really that should be quiet sufficient for most instances. 

2. There is a database tool called adminer for managing and even "dumping" your database. I am an old school command line guy and don't use web tools, even phpMyAdmin, so I can't attest to how well it works for exports/backups, but I do know our technicians use it. You may want to consider that for quick pre-upgrade DB dumps. 

[Square Wheels]

I feared it would be technically difficult, but it sure would be a great feature for smaller, hobby sites like mine.

[CP]

My host backs up on Sunday so I just wait till Monday or Tuesday to upgrade the site. However, I also create backups myself just in case other issues pop up. Learned my lesson. I have only used the auto-upgrader once to see how it worked. But I am kinda old school and just upload the files to the server and manually upgrade. If you could even say manual upgrade, used to be you would have to edit files and such before uploading them to the server and hope for the best.