Chihuahua for UpdraftPlus

Sends a lil bark (email) if your nightly UpdraftPlus backups haven't run.

What This Does

UpdraftPlus is brilliant at backing up WordPress sites. But if your backup schedule breaks (plugin conflict, hosting hiccup, WP-Cron taking a day off) you won't know until you need to restore something. And by then it's too late.

Chihuahua for UpdraftPlus watches your backup schedule and sends you an email if a completed backup isn't recorded within the expected window. Small plugin, loud when it matters.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.8+
• PHP 8.3+
• UpdraftPlus (required dependency)

Installation

Download the latest release from the Releases page and upload it via Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.

WordPress will block activation if UpdraftPlus isn't installed and active first. That's by design—this plugin doesn't do anything without UpdraftPlus.

Alternatively, install Git Updater and point it at littleroomstudio/updraft-chihuahua to pull updates directly from this repo.

How It Works

On activation, the plugin reads UpdraftPlus's scheduled cron events (updraft_backup and updraft_backup_database) and schedules a daily check six hours after the later of the two.

At check time, it reads the updraft_last_backup option and compares the recorded completion timestamp against a configured threshold. If the backup is stale or missing, it sends an email to the configured address.

The check runs via WP-Cron. If you're running production sites with WP-Cron disabled in favor of a real crontab (you should be), trigger the check manually with:

wp cron event run updraft_chihuahua_check

Configuration

Both settings can be defined in wp-config.php. Neither is required tho. The defaults work fine out of the box.

// Address to receive missed-backup alerts. Defaults to admin_email.
define( 'UPDRAFT_CHIHUAHUA_EMAIL', 'you@example.com' );

// Alert threshold in seconds. Defaults to 30 hours.
define( 'UPDRAFT_CHIHUAHUA_THRESHOLD', 30 * HOUR_IN_SECONDS );

The 30 hour default gives UpdraftPlus a six hour window past the 24 hour mark. That's plenty of runway for large sites where the uploads directory splits into dozens of zip chunks and the backup process takes a while to finish.

Admin Notice

When you're viewing the UpdraftPlus settings page, a notice displays the next scheduled check time and the alert recipient address. Helpful for confirming everything's wired up correctly.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later