The next release if UpdraftPlus will have a feature we think is quite important. Under the hood, UpdraftPlus can now record “warnings”.
Until now, it has only dealt with errors – conditions which it considers as serious enough to report to user in the dashboard, and which indicate that the backup failed. A “warning” on the contrary, is an indication that something is probably wrong, or may in future be a problem, but that the backup continued without it. It is something to check out; but which is not fatal to completing the backup. Warnings will be shown in the dashboard, and noted in the report emails sent at the end of a backup run.
Examples of warnings (from the currently in-development version):
- Your disk space is getting low.
- You have absolutely enormous database tables (usually means you want to have a spring-clean).
- You have files that your webserver has no permission to read (so can’t be backed up).
- An enormous file was encountered (which your webserver may not be able to pack into the zip – often these are archives created by other backup plugins, so this gives you a chance to exclude them from the backup).
- An external directory which you indicated to add (in the “More Files” add-on) to the backup does not actually exist.
Automated backups are all about reliability – and getting the information to you when something is up, so that you can respond before it becomes a bigger problem. This change helps UpdraftPlus solidify its claims as WordPress’s most dependable backup plugin.
