Ara-Anna: this has been somewhat a long-running topic (the backup that is) and is spread over several threads so it's easy to be confused. Let me start from the beginning
As it stands, or stood rather, there is no way to backup this board. Not by any of us here. The phpbb people did say cryptically that backing up might be available in the near future to all free phpbb users like us. But when - no one was ever able to get an answer out of them.
Then - back in April the tech help people said there is a way to backup, but it would be a one time kind of thing and it would cost $25.- (you can read it up in the tech help thread
here. We were busy building this board and so the question got a bit sidelined until June, when we saw that we would be opening this board for good and we might seriously think about moving eventually to our own place. That's when I started bugging them again about the backup. It's taken from then to yesterday, when I finally got an email answer from them that they will do the backup and gave me the details on where and how to pay. (The $25.- is really a non-issue here and who pays it but someone has to and since I'm the one who started this place - in a way - it's my honor to do so
- no strings attached, no fear
)
Wether or not we're actually going to have a downtime no one knows for sure. However, some tech savvy posters here have pointed out that this is a possibility. The phpbb tech people have not confirmed there will be a downtime and although I will ask them in my payment confirmation email that goes out tomorrow I don't think (from previous experience with their communication) I don't expect they'll answer.
So, I've asked the Ranger to make a Global Annoucement as a possible alert in case it happens, so that people don't panic and jump to all sorts of conlusions we've been hacked or what-have-you-not
Hopefully the whole thing will pass without us even noticing anything, which of course is also a possibility.
The backup first and foremost (for the time being) will be just that: a backup copy for us in case something does go wrong (over which we have little control being here on this free board). It will also serve as a 'test-base' if me make the decision to move to our own place - something which has been discussed at length here before but which only really now becomes a possible viability through having a backup. Without it, we would be almost unable to move threads and posts (except manually which would be an extremely tedious and long process to say the least.
We're not moving anytime soon yet. Before we even begin that topic again, the Charter needs to be finished totally and ratified and then anther member discussion needs to take place as well as putting a committee together.
All in due time
And meanwhile we have at least a backup
Hope that answers your questions.
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Resident witchâ„¢