On behalf of the entire team at Watchful.net, I’m delighted to announce that we’re joining forces with XCloner!
Ovidiu Liuta has been the lead developer of XCloner for over 10 years.
In that time, he has built a great plugin, with over 40,000 active users. XCloner is one of the top 10 most popular WordPress backup plugins.
A few months ago, we started talking with Ovidiu about adding XCloner support to Watchful, our remote site update and maintenance service. Watchful allows you to back up, update, and manage all your WordPress sites. We already support other WordPress backup options such as All-in-One Migration and Akeeba Backup.
XCloner was next on our list of plugins to support, so we sent an email to Ovidiu.
The more we talked with Ovidiu, the more our discussions started to change from supporting XCloner to adopting it. Ovidiu was happy to keep working on XCloner, but was tired of doing it alone.
In February, I flew over to meet him in Cluj, Romania. We shared a nice meal and a few pints at The Soviet — a local retro-themed watering hole. Not long afterwards we agreed to fold XCloner into Watchful and add it to our list of supported backup plugins. You can click here to read Ovidiu’s thoughts on this change.
We’re all excited to work on XCloner together, and to continue developing this powerful backup plugin.
How will XCloner users be impacted?
We believe that all of the upcoming changes will be positive for everyone currently using XCloner.
You will see more regular updates for the plugin. You’ll also enjoy faster support. Ovidiu will still be around, but he’ll be complemented by Watchful team members.
You’ll start to see some cosmetic changes on the website and other places such as XCloner’s listing on the WordPress directory. Take a look, and you’ll see there’s already a new logo there.
Other items on our early to-do list will be revamping the website and updating the documentation.
We also plan to do a review of the plugin code to squash any bugs we find.
Finally, our team will spend the next few months really digging into XCloner and learning from Ovidiu.
Importantly, there are no immediate plans to change any of the features in XCloner or to make a premium version. XCloner has been one of the most popular, truly-free backup plugins for WordPress, and our current plan is to keep it that way.
If you have any questions, please ask in the comments below. You can also get in touch with me directly via email or Twitter. Thanks for using XCloner, and let me know how we can help you!
Victor Drover
Owner, Watchful / XCloner