Updraft – A Cloud Backup and Restore Plugin For WordPress

Over the past several months I have been working hard on a new plugin for WordPress and now I am pleased to unveil the initial release.

Updraft is a backup and restore plugin for WordPress. It can do scheduled or one time backups of your plugins, themes, uploads, and DB itself. These backups can be kept locally, emailed, sent to an FTP server, uploaded to Rackspace Cloud Files, or transferred to Amazon S3.1

Additionally, you can pick the number of backups to retain and restore from a backup of your choice either by using a local backup, uploading copies yourself, or pulling them down from your cloud service.2

Visit the Updraft homepage to learn more, see a screencast, and give feedback on bugs or features you’d like to see. I look forward to hearing from you!

  1. Updraft requires WordPress 3.0 or greater!
  2. At this time restoration does not encompass DB. You will need to download and restore the DB via another tool. I am actively looking for ways to work around this issue for a future release.

Fixing GrowlMail in 10.6.4 (Mail 4.3)

Another OS X release, another broken GrowlMail bundle. I did a post just like this for 10.6.2. Check it out if you want more background on why this occurs.

Easy Fix

Download a pre-patched GrowlMail.bundle and drop it in your ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/ directory1. If you want it available to multiple users on your system, use /Library/Mail/Bundles/.

Download patched bundle

If you use this method you’re all set; no need to use the command line solution below.

Add New UUIDs to SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs

If you have already had your plugins disabled by opening Mail.app you’ll need to look in ~/Library/Mail (or /Library/Mail if you installed globally) and move the files back to the active bundles directory. They’ll typically be in Bundles (Disabled), so quit Mail, find them, and move them back into the proper directory.

If you have a local installation:

defaults write ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "E71BD599-351A-42C5-9B63-EA5C47F7CE8E"
defaults write ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "B842F7D0-4D81-4DDF-A672-129CA5B32D57"

Global installation:

defaults write /Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "E71BD599-351A-42C5-9B63-EA5C47F7CE8E"
defaults write /Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "B842F7D0-4D81-4DDF-A672-129CA5B32D57"
  1. ~ means your home directory if you’re unfamiliar with the syntax. You can click the home icon on your Finder sidebar if you’re still confused

Tab Duplicator, A Safari 5 Extension


View All My Safari Extensions

Tab Duplicator adds a contextual menu item as well as a toolbar icon1 that will duplicate your active tab. By default it creates a new tab in the background, but it can be configured to make them foreground as well. You can also select tab positioning (first, last, before active tab, after active tab).

To install:

  • Download the signed extension and double click to install2
  • Right click and choose “Duplicate Tab”.

You can view the source on GitHub as well! If you have suggestions for improvements let me know! Bug reports should be directed to the issues page.

Changes in 1.2

  • Added toolbar icon in addition to contextual menu. If you don’t want it you can hold command and click and drag it off to remove.
  • You can now choose where to position your duplicated tabs. Choices are after current tab (default), before current tab, beginning, or end.
  • Optimized code. No more injected script.
  • Validation of events (disables button/contextual menu item if no URL is loaded)

Thanks to Brian Kim for the icon!

  1. You can hold command and drag the toolbar item off the toolbar if you don’t want to use it!
  2. If you haven’t enabled extensions in Safari then learn how.

Enabling Extensions In Safari 5

View All My Safari Extensions

People keep asking me how to install extensions in Safari 5, so here’s a quick visual primer.

Open Safari’s preferences, click the advanced tab at the top, and check “Show Develop menu in menu bar”.

Now click the Develop menu in the menu bar and select “Enable Extensions”.

Extensions are now enabled! Double click your extension to add it, and then you can control them in the Safari prefs under the Extensions tab.

Google Lightboxer, A Safari 5 Extension

7/20/2010 Update – Google has released a significant images update that breaks lightboxer. I’ll look into this and fix it within the next week or so.


View All My Safari Extensions

Google Lightboxer1 is a Safari 5 extension that creates a Lightbox2 slideshow on Google Images. Click any image and a slideshow will appear loading the full resolution images. If you don’t want to have the lightbox appear, hold command and it will be disabled temporarily.

To install:

Latest Release – v1.3

  • Pulls the Google Images metadata into the colorbox so you can see it while you’re browsing more easily.

Known issues:

  • Some JS errors in console. Will be resolved in future release, but they are cosmetic only.

You can view the source on GitHub as well! If you have suggestions for improvements let me know! Bug reports should be directed to the issues page.

  1. Icon courtesy of Brian Kim.
  2. Actually it’s done using Colorbox
  3. If you haven’t enabled extensions in Safari then learn how.

ctrlSwitcher, A Safari 5 Extension


View All My Safari Extensions

On the Ars Technica forums someone mentioned that they’d like to be able to switch between tabs using command + numbers to choose tabs. I took a look at the Safari extension system, and while you can’t override the shortcuts bound to cmd 1-91 due to security restrictions, control is available. An hour or so later and ctrlSwitcher was born.

To use:

  • Download the signed extension and double click to install2
  • Pick if you want to use ctrl, opt, or ctrl+opt as your meta keys (default ctrl) in the prefs
  • Either close all tabs or restart your browser. ctrlSwitcher has to load a small script in each loaded tab (empty tabs cannot be switched to/from due to limitations on extensions)

v1.4:

  • ctrlSwitcher now allows you to switch tabs 10 through 19. Zero is for tab 10 and Q through P (on a QWERTY layout) is 11-19.3 Thanks to Zaudragon for the patch!


You can view the source on GitHub as well! If you have suggestions for improvements let me know! Bug reports should be directed to the issues page.

  1. cmd-1 through 9 are assigned to bookmarks on your bookmarks bar in Safari
  2. If you haven’t enabled extensions in Safari then learn how.
  3. Unfortunately Safari extensions don’t have much support for i18n at the moment so other keyboard layouts are not supported.