Well, my partners on my forum has decided to move our site to a newer host. A paid one to be exact. And we did that already. Now all we need to do is move our forum over to the new host. We want to do this without losing all of our posts and other data. I know it has something to do with the MySQL files but I don't really understand it. Some help would be appreciated.

We are running Invision Power Board 1.3.1 final

Also, we're thinking about upgrading our board to a newer version of IPB because we heard that its better in more ways than one. But then again, it might be harder to do.

So basically, we want to :

-Move our IPB database from this host to the newer one without losing the data
-Upgrade our board version

Also, before you go yelling at me for any reason, make note that I :

-am not leaving because Trap17 isn't good enough
-am not leaving Trap17 at all, my partners are [They are bloodsucking leeches]
-already searched the forums, but I didn't find anything useful [Or that I didn't look hard enough]

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Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Firstly, you must know how to back-up your Invision Power Board files and folders from Cpanel or simply download it from FTP. That way files and folders can be backed-up. Cpanel back-up is very easy. Just go to your Cpanel and among many icons that appear at Cpanel home there is BACK-UP as well. Click that and it will guide you how to back up. You can download backed-up file (it will be tar or zip file) to your computer. And upload again the file to a new server using your Cpanel and extract there as usual. And re-arrange the folder path.

If you back-up by downloading files and folders using ftp, whatever you've download upload again in your new host. Don't upload all at once, but do folder by folder, this is good because sometimes due to internet connection some files may not be transfer to the server fully. In that case your forum will always have problems.

Now Database. There are two ways to back up the database. One way is from IPB control panel, if you are admin you can do it.

The second one is using phpMyAdmin which you can find once again in the Control panel homepage. Click phpMyAdmin and you will find the page where left side there will be option to choose which database you want to manage. Select the drop-down menu (one the left menu -left side of the page). It will open the database of the forum. On top of the page you will then be able to see options like query, export, etc. CLick Export, when you did there will be options to select TABLES. SELECT ALL and export it as gzip file (tick this option). It will prompt you to download the file as gzip file. Save it to your drive and finish the download.

How to install :
In your new host, login to Cpanel and find databases > MySQL database, create new database. Create user with password. And assign the user with ALL privileges option.

Now go back to your Cpanel home and click on phpMyAdmin once again. And select the database you've created using drop-down menu as usual. Now on the main body of the phpMyAdmin page you will be able to see run your query. Import the back-up gzip file, browse and upload it. It will install it. That's it.

You must edit configuration file in your IPB board, assing the new value for file path and others including the database username and password. Your forum should work normally.

I hope this helps. If not, please respond, more members can help you out.