How To Backup Your Phpbb2 Forum And Restore It On A Phpbb3 Server. A step-by-step tutorial for testing your backup and perform an upgrade

I love the phpbb2 forum system. I used it to create my family forum. I really appreciated how easy the installation was, using the âFantasticoâ menu of my Xisto cpanel. And I appreciate the one-click backup facility provided by the forum.
Making a backup is really easy, and you have to do it often. So, in case of trouble of your forum, for instance if the forum was spoiled by some spammers, you can easily go back to a point in time where your forum worked correctly.
Also, a backup is necessary in case of a big mistake (âdo you really want to destroy your forum, answer yes or noâ â oops sorry !)
Now comes the reason of this topic. This reason is twofold.
First of all, a backup is useful only if you are sure that itâs valid. As long as you did not test your backup, you donât know if really everything is there.
Secondly, the version of phpbb on Xisto forum is 2.0.22, which is a rather old version. The forecomming version is phpbb3, currently RC7. So, you must get ready to switch from phpbb2 to phpbb3, in order to take full benefit from the new release features.
Thatâs why I suggest you to make a full backup of your current phpbb2 forum here at Xisto, and check your backup by means of perforuming a fresh installation on another machine, and switching your fresh install to phpbb3.
The whole operation is completely harmless : you donât touch your current installation, you only perform a backup. And, as you perform a fresh installation of a completely new machine, if you donât like your installation you simply remove everything on the new machine.

1. FIRST STEP : BACKUP YOUR CURRENT FORUM.
Log in to your forum using the forum administrator name and password.
Then, click âGo to the Administration pannelâ. Confirmation of your password will be asked, and you will be connected to the administration page. In the left-side pannel, go to the âGeneral Adminâ section and click âBackup Databaseâ. You will be asked for the place on your PC where to download the database backup. This file, which has a name like something.sql, is the backup we will test by mean of restoring and testing it. Put this file in a safe place, itâs your security in case of huge catastrophy experienced by your current forum.
Please perform now a copy of this file, and name this copy âmodified.sqlâ. Now we will feel free to modify this âmodified.sqlâ file because the modifications will not affect the original file.

2. DOWNLOAD A FRESH COPY OF THE PHPBB2 AND PHPBB3 SOFTWARE.
In order to master everything, even in case of a big catastrophy, you need to have all the necessary building elements. You already have tha data in your âmodified.sqlâ file, now you need the basic forum software.
You need to download the phpbb2 forum sofware from http://forums.xisto.com/forum/199-forum/ , and especially here http://forums.xisto.com/topic/88637-topic/?findpost=1064337390 .

4. INSTALL PHPBB2 ON YOUR NEW WEBSITE.
After having created your site, and verified that this site works by mean of using a browser in order to go to yourname.yoursubdomain.com , create two folders, the first one named âoldforumâ and the second one name ânewforumâ on your hosted account root directory.
Locally on your pc, unpack the two files XXXgz you previously downloaded. Then, use a ftp client in order to upload the content of the PHPBB2 subfolder to the folder you named âoldforumâ and the content of the PHPBB3 subfolder to the folder you named ânewforumâ.
Now, use the tools provided by your website provider in order to create a database and a database user. Give them names you can easily remember, like âmyname_myforumâ.
Using your favourite web browser, go to the subfolder name oldforum of your hosting account, itâs name is probably something like yourname.yoursubdomain.com/oldforum/.
You will see the main screen of the phpbb2 installer. You will be asked for the database name, give the database name you decided when creating the database, the database manager you also decided, and choose the forum administrator name and password for your forum.
Continue the installation until you see that your forum is open and that people can connect and read the standard welcome messages.
Now your new phpbb2 forum is ready. Itâs empty, so itâs ready for receiving your modified backup.


5. MODIFY YOUR âMODIFIED.SQLâ FILE.
We are going to midify your backup, in order to remove unwanted informations.
As a matter of fact, the backup of your current phpbb2 forum at Xisto has some infos concerning the way to connect to the database, as well as the exact URL of your forum programs at your current Xisto forum.
These values are useless for the new forum, because you just replaced them for the values concerning the new location at the empty freshly installed phpbb2 forum.
Use your favourite word processor in order to edit the âmodified.sqlâ backup file. Personally, I use microsoft Word, but you can use any other word processor. You will have to remove eveything concerning the phpbb_config table. Locate the line starting with â# TABLE: phpbb_configâ
Remove everything between this line and the line just before â# TABLE: phpbb_forumsâ. Do not remove the line with phpbb_forums.
By the way, this name âphpbb_configâ is the name with the default prefix name. This is subject to change to something slightly different if you happened to choose another prefix, like âmyforum_â instead of âphpbb_â, you can see it easily when looking for the word âconfigâ in the sql file.
Now you have a backup which has everything except the forum server, database and cookie informations.

6. RELOAD YOUR MODIFIED BACKUP.
These infos are the only ones currently in your new forum location. Log in to the new phpbb2 forum administration panel, and click on âRestore databaseâ. As backup file to be restored, choose the modified.sql file.
Thatâs all, all the infos of your live forum are now in your new site ! You can go to the forum index and see that all your posts are there.

7. INSTALL PHPBB3 ON YOUR NEW WEBSITE.
Open your browser and give the url of the newforum where you downloaded the phpbb3 software. Answer all the questions, including the name of the database, the name of the database administrator and itâs password, the name of the forum admin and his password, as well as the table prefix. Choose phpbb3_ as prefix instead of the standard value of phpbb_ suggested by the install, in order not to have the âtable already existsâ error message during the table creation.

8. MIGRATE YOUR RESTORED DATABASE.
At the end of the phpbb3 standard installation, you will be asked if you want to go live, or if you want to migrate a previous phpbb2 database. Choose the migration option, you will be asked for the location of the phpbb2 forum to be converted, give the path ../oldforum.

9. THATâS ALL.
At the end of the migration process, you will be able to see all your forums in the phpbb3 format. Connect to your new phpbb3 forum, and you will be able to see all the posts from your current phpbb2 forum.

10. CONCLUSION.
As you can verify it now, all your data from your current phpbb2 forum have been migrated to the new site with a phpbb3 forum format. You have been able to backup your forum, test your backup and update it to the newest version.
This is a very important part of the Open world philosophy. The only precious thing is your set of data, the content of the backup. You see that you are able to move it anywhere at any time. Now you do not depend from any hardware, software or hosting provider, you can put your forum on any platform, hosted by any provider on any kind of hardware or operating system, for instance you can move it to your own PC with your own web server.
Because you are free, you will be able to freely choose your hardware and software provider ; and of course you will freely choose to keep going with Xisto because it has the best price/perforcance available today !