Current behavior:
Wild Apricot automatically backs up all the datain all accounts daily. However, this is intended for emergency serverproblems only and these backups are not accessible to clients.Restoring a specific page or set of records on client request is a timeconsuming operation (which we currently do not charge for).
Thereare also export operations for all the key data sets (members,  donors,event attendees, payments) but these do not cover settings and webpages and have to be run manually one by one.

Desired behavior:
Ability for clients to initiate a full backup of their account at any time.

Notes:
1)The key issue is to generate backup which can be browsed in some way,for example to manually retrieve some records for manual emergencyrestore - or to transfer the data into another system.
2) ideallythis backup can be imported back into the account. However thisincreases the volume of work required by a huge margin.

---

Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Please put on your list an off site back up of an entire web site. This is insurance against something happening to you or your facility. It is a lot easier than backing up page by page.

 Thanks!

Hello,

There are several requests regarding this problem and we have this requirement in our wish list. But at the moment we can not estimate when this might be done because it needs an additional analysis.

Do you have any special ideas for this a feature? Can you elaborate how this would ideally work?

---

Vassily, Wild Apricot team

How about there be something on the administrator dash board to backup the site to the users hard drive. You could browse to the location where you want the backup and it would initiate an ftp job. How about that?

Thanks!

Thanks for the input.

---

Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

We have quite a bit on our plate and want to analyze this as thoroughly as possible, so for the time being we are going to move this to the wishlist.

 As always, we appreciate any suggestions or comments you have about this issue.

I do worry about data loss and try to remember to do backups, but I'm forgetful.  I'd find the following helpful: Every X days/months (user setting), send an email to the administrator with a reminder to do a backup.  Ideally, with a link to where you need to go to in Wild Apricot to initiate the backup or backups.  And yes, whatever is exported ought to be importable, assuming that the data hasn't been savaged in some way.

(What would really be good is a completely automated backup.  But I can't see how that would be possible).

Thanks for the suggestions and ideas.

We would definitely want to make sure that if export your data that you can re-import it, since a lot of people will want to do an export before making a change to the member database, for example.

It was mentioned that we should review Drupal backup/migrate module as a good prototype for what can be implemented in WA.

---

Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

can't beieve this is not part of the system yet... this is basic systems design 101... backup and restore! we have about 6 people editing the site and if just one of them messes up, we can potentially lose huge chunks of information -- I guess the alternative is simply to call in and have tech support fix it for us...

 //ray

 

I agree, Raymond. It is surprising to me too that there is no user-accessible backup system - that's really quite scary.  WA say they'll restore accounts 'on client request' and it is a 'time-consuming operation (which we currently do not charge for)'.  Well, give us the tools and we will do the job!

Coupled with no text search facility for restricted (i.e. members only) pages, an unprotected, slow and clunky file management system for documents and repeated protestations that the development team are very busy, I wonder whether the priorities are right on that wishlist?   Also WA might want to analyse that list and check just how many implementation deadlines end up slipping once or twice.

The aspect of WA that sets it apart from other CMS systems is its ability to manage membership details/payments well.  However, the website content side of things is far less sophisticated than many competitor CMS offerings, even from Open Source systems like Joomla! and Drupal. 

So I wonder whether the priority for now should shift more towards bringing the basic CMS stuff up to speed with other offerings: client manageable backups, search facility, secure file storage are all high on my list - and I appreciate other people will have different priorities and meeting all of them at once is impossible. 

Still, this is a commercial product and when you're paying for something, you do expect a different level of response to feature requests from 'we'll put this on the wishlist', the very name of which suggests a low likelihood of it ever being implemented.

I want to like this software and it is beginning to be a strain to do so with the lack of basic CMS features. The continual references to how much work you have to do don't help - we're all busy, guys! :-)

Phil Swallow

Phil,

Appreciate your input. We are quite aware of the limitations of our CMS. In terms of our priorities we consider membership database/membership management to be our core functionality and our current priority #1. After that - event management system and CMS, then everything else.

Once we refine the core functionality, we would be able to devote more and more time to CMS features. 

Re client manageable backups - frankly, this is a big challenge due to the fact that we update the system 3-5 times a year. What good is the backup if people can't restore from it? And ensuring compatibility of backups between different versions is an issue. 

---

Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Twice this year less-experienced admins in our group have hit the wrong button and caused trouble. 

One removed a bunch of "contact" database fields, thinking these would affect only contacts and not "members".  Alas, we had to spend hours restoring our database and the member profile photos were lost for good. 

Another occasion a first-time web page editor, adding links to documents, added the same one twice and clicked that little innocent little green button "delete page".  Out went the entire webpage, a carefully constructed archive, instead of the document he intende to delete.

A Backup feature for Member/Contact Database and Web pages is highly desired.  I would be happy to be able to store and recover just a single backup. 

In cases like this a backup would be a real life saver.  If you have ever suffered similar consequences, or fear you might, reply here and vote this wishlist feature up.

---

-michellebw

Good examples, thank you very much Michelle. These really help us to understand what are the typical situations we need to handle - so that we might be able to come up with simpler solutions than overall backup (which is very complicated to do IF we to provide for restore from this backup too).

FYI - if a page gets accidentally gets deleted, contact our tech support and in many cases we can restore it.

---

Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Just last week I have had a problem with a "corrupted" web page header that made me think once again that we do really need a way of backing up our web pages

I spent quite a time trying to correct matters - if I could have just done a "page restore" from a locally stored, user initiated backup, I could have investigated the problem with less urgency.

So a web page backup facility definitely gets our vote.

Regards
Ian
worthing and adur chamber of commerce

This evening I was editing a page trying to change all the font to BOLD in one section.  When I hit save the entire page disappeared.  I do not feel I did anything wrong or incorrect, but instead that there is a glitch in WA.  Please advise.

Marie

This is a huge concern.  We are brand new clients.  Unfortunately, I did not thoroughly investigate this aspect before we started.  I agree with other posters that this should be a high priority.  Not providing any solution for such an essential function is not acceptable on the basis that it is "complicated".  When you go into help and put in "backup," "back up" or "restore"...there is nothing! 

There should be two components...one for the database records and setup, and one for the documents/images/page templates.  What is the CMS that is used for this system?  Is it based on one of the open source CMS's?  If so, do they have a backup utility?  I would vote to move this from the wishlist to the roadmap as soon as possible. 

Thanks, Judy

---

Judy Nelson-Moore
NMPCA

Marie, did you try the Undo button on the page?

Try that and if does not help, contact support and we will restore the page from our backup. 

---

Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Judy,

 

We run our own backup so if there is ever a system malfunction we can always restore content.

Our CMS is created from scratch and is not based on any open source CMS.

I still agree with the validity of this request - I guess this is important to prevent accidental user mistakes.

I would appreciate input about scenarios/reasons for backup/restore. 

---

Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

What kind input are you looking for?  Specific ways that we might accidentally screw up our data?

Well to my way of thinking it really doesn't matter HOW we get into problems, all that matters is that we can recover QUICKLY and EASILY.
I have had problems with my own incompetence, M$ IE8, Firefox 3.x.x and the WA Edit HTML box. The result is always the same however - I want to reload a webpage from a backup.

Now we are based in the UK so if I screw up at 8am, with the best will in the world I don't think I'm going to get much response from WA for 6 or so hours. So my website could be in bits for that long.

Worse than that, I don't think I'm alone in trying to make "serious" updates over weekends so now we can be looking at 50+ hours before I can recover. Not acceptable.

Others round the world will of course be even worse off.

The same argument applies to Member Database problems. If it's screwed up for whatever reason, I need to be able to restore QUICKLY.

Regards,
Ian
worthing and adur chamber of commerce

Does anyone know if there is a capability of obtaining a copy of an entire website? As our website is constantly changing we'd like to have a periodic copy of it for archival purposes as it would document the activities of our organization over time. This is a standard practice for many websites, particularly those at colleges and universities. Currently, I take a screen shot of the front page of our website, but would like to expand this.

Many thanks. — Bob 

 

Bob, there is currently no way to do this automatically in Wild Apricot, sorry. 

 

---

Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

There are different ways to backup - and restore - so what I am trying to figure out are possible scenarios of hos this might be used.

From what I am hearing about webpages it sounds to me like a good solution might be versioning of web pages - so that each web page can be restored to an older version, similar to common functionality in wiki software. Thoughts?

About member database - what are the scenarios for it to become  screwed up?

---

Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Unfortunately for me the Undo button was not available.  I am not sure if the problem originated with Firefox or WA but the entire page went blank and lost all my design and rolled all the way back past the Save option.  Whew.

Fortunately, I contacted your tech support and the page was restored by your folks within two days.  THANKS so much for that service.

Anyway, without pointing fingers of blame, all I wanted was to restore the page I spent hours creating.  Wild Apricot did that for me within 2 days.  It would have been nice to have a restore option on the dashboard so that I could do it myself within 10 minutes.  That would be a super advantage.

Anyway, thanks for taking care of it for me.