Symphony.

Since I’ve seen a couple of people forgetting to create a backup of their .htaccess-file before updating Symphony I am thinking about creating an extension that adds a button to the System Preferences to do that.

Now I am thinking: Should the extension put the file somewhere safe on the server or should it simply be a convenient button that triggers a download of the file?

Another question: Why can’t symphony have a default-.htaccess-file? Is it because there are extensions wich need custom changes to the file in order to work? In this case, symphony could still have a default-file wich ensures that people can at least access the backend even if they’ve forgot backing up their .htaccess file.

In this case the extension could have a “Backup”- and a “Restore”-button (to put the file somewhere save and to overwrite the default-file with the custom one).

The .htaccess file is generated during installation. Why can’t Symphony just create a new one for the admin area if it detects that the file is missing after an update?

The .htaccess needs to be backed up since it can be custom for each build. If you install Symphony in a subfolder (i.e. not the root of your domain) then the paths in the .htaccess file will contain this subfolder. For the majority of cases though, the .htaccess contents will be identical.

I wonder whether these rules could actually go into the root .htacess, above the existing ones so that they are caught first.

That, or the code that generates the .htaccess in /symphony/ during the original install procedure is re-used in the update.php so that the .htaccess is re-generated when upgrading.

This way, one could overwrite the /symphony folder, run update.php, and the .htaccess will be rebuilt.

Okay, then I think symphony should overwrite the file (with a default one or run the generator just like when installing). I will continue writing my extension to put the file somewhere safe and put it back into /symphony/ with a single click.

I also find it a little annoying when updating multiple sites. I agree that the update should take care of it on its own.