Unfortunately, the messages aren't stored in a file on a server. They are stored in thousands of little files on the server. Each thread gets its own file, and the forum has no built in backup capabilities that I'm aware of or have managed to find. There are also some auxiliary files that are updated when people post, so to backup I'd have to shut down the forum while I'm doing so. And it would take a while with any of my ftp software. I don't have enough access to my server to compress things over there and send it all over at once.
The new forum, on the other hand, has one-click backup capabilities, so far as I can tell from the test I ran when I put it up.
Anyway, I'm not suddenly going to clean this forum out. I have no reason to wipe it, and plenty of reasons to keep it. The bug reports in particular are very useful. As are the suggestions. I don't get a chance to read much else (I've already spent half an hour on the forums just doing my normal checkup, and I haven't even done bugs yet), though I'll read parts here and there. I'm not really interested in being held to a specific page by page breakdown and wouldn't be able to provide one in any case. Anyway, "starting clean" refers to putting up a new forum where I probably won't be able to import threads/user lists. This forum is very old, and only convertor we found is messy and unlikely to provide satisfactory results.
I'm also locking this before some of the subthreads within it get any more out of hand. We can talk about any new forum on the thread linked above.
Author
Topic: Toady, listen up and answere some questions. Now. (Read 2675 times)