UpdraftPlus doesn't create folder within bucket if it doesn't exist already

Bug
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1

Hello! I am a pro member utilizing a variety of extensions installed to my MainWP dashboard and management portal, one of which includes the UpdraftPlus extension, which I am utilizing in tandem with my AWS S3 account, and Updraft Premium Enterprise Plan. The AWS S3 account is configured using the Updraft-recommended IAM policy configuration (which can be found within their documentation, located here), This same configuration, when manually added to an individual website, from the WP-Admin interface, automatically creates a new folder within the configured bucket, if the folder does not already exist.

However, I am encountering an issue wherein the MainWP UpdraftPlus configuration is, for whatever reason, not ever actually creating that missing folder, for a newly onboarded domain name, when the site is added to the MainWP dashboard, or a website sync is performed, or any other operation. I’ve found that the only way that the backups are actually stored to S3 is to manually log into the S3 management console in AWS, and create the name of the folder manually.

Is there something that I am missing with my configuration, and not doing right, or would this be a bug in the extension?

Please feel free to request technical information, I am more than willing to provide.

Thank you!

1 Like
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Hi @ahctsllc

Due to security restrictions imposed by the providers of remote storage options, some of them may need to be configured on the child site themselves, or on the storage provider’s website as is the case here.

After that initial configuration or authentication, the rest of the setup can be performed via MainWP Dashboard.

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Thank you for your reply.

I guess I am confused, then, why this is something that cannot be done through MainWP, when it is able to be done automatically through the Updraft Plus plugin, when installed and configured manually, without using the MainWP Dashboard. Do you have any information regarding this?

1 Like
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The difference is in the URL from which the requests originate. Most remote storage providers require that initial setup or authentication is performed from the child site itself.

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So, from what I am understanding then, you are saying that because the MainWP dashboard, and the Updraft Plus extension do not have the functionality within the child website to trigger the child site to run the function(s) necessary and then report back to the dashboard, it is not possible to have one of the core reasons that the MainWP Updraft Plus extension is useful on a large-scale actually happen?

I was under the impression that I would not need to log into S3 every time that I create a new website within my infrastructure, which would save me a lot of time. Honestly, if I have to go into S3 and configure the bucket subfolder just to make the extension function, it seems to defeat the main intention of the extension.

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We’ve looked into this further, and S3 should be configurable through the UpdraftPlus extension - as opposed to other remote storage options, which still do require initial authentication on child sites.

Can you please send us a screenshot of the configured extension (with API blurred, of course)?

Also, can you verify if the plugin on the child site appears to be configured as expected after the extension passes its settings? And please send us the screenshot of the plugin settings as well.

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Sure thing! Here is the settings of the MainWP Extension, with black-box redaction of sensitive information.

The S3 Location storage option for the S3 configuration is redacted in part, however I can tell you that the redacted portion of the configuration line is a 20-character long text string, with no special characters, spaces, or numbers, followed by the visible content.

I can additionally tell you that there are UI/UX issues with the extension’s toggle switches – whenever they are clicked, the color changes, but the toggle button doesn’t actually move – hence why it shows green for using the premium version, however, the toggle shows set to the off state still. This is another item that has caused me confusion throughout the entire process of utilizing the extension.

It shows that I am unable to post more than one image due to my account on the forums being new, so I have uploaded the images to my CDN, where you can access them directly via the URLs below, and included further in my post.

MainWP Extension Settings:

https://cdn.ahcts.co/ss/Screenshot%202023-03-15%20110530.png
https://cdn.ahcts.co/ss/Screenshot%202023-03-15%20110737.png

When I first add a new website to MainWP and set it up to work with the Updraft extension, it does not usually actually trigger the update to the child site, even after repeatedly syncing both the entire system’s websites, and the new website individually. I’ve found that the one way I can bypass this is by going to the MainWP Updraft Extension’s settings, and then enabling “debug mode” in the advanced settings, and clicking save. I have found that usually, when I do this, the child site’s updraft plus configuration will finally update to match the settings within the MainWP Extension.

Another thing that I have noticed when I added a subdomain-hosted website to MainWP, is that the Updraft extension took the site name of subdomain.example.co, and, in the Updraft configuration on the child site, configured the S3 bucket subfolder to be s3://bucketname/subdomain.example_.co for some reason.
I don’t know if it would make a difference, but I also have the website example.co configured and connected to my MainWP dashboard as well.

I will include a redacted screenshot of the configuration of Updraft from one of the several child websites that are within my system, however, I pretty much am having to repeatedly do configuration updates through MainWP, and so on, to trigger the settings to be applied manually, because it doesn’t automatically apply the configuration to the remote child automatically.

Child Site Settings:
https://cdn.ahcts.co/ss/Screenshot%202023-03-15%20112824.png

Would you like any additional information, and does this provide answer to all of your above questions?

Thank you!

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Thanks for the detailed reply, @ahctsllc .

It does seem like there might be an issue with the %siteurl% token used in the extension settings as part of the S3 location.

It should not be adding passing the underscore to the plugin settings.

Can you please check if using %sitename% works as expected, meaning no extra characters are passed to the plugin settings, and if the directory gets created in AWS S3?
Just in case, try using a relatively simple Site name for the child site you’ll be testing.

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