I think I might have some bad news re backup. Went cruising on the support site and found this:
<<anyway, at this point of time we don't provide any individual forum backup.>>
<<we are having 1 database with hundred of thousands table ... default PHPBB backup feature will fail due to our customisation.
we will only start developing/offering backup solution after we've upgraded to phpbb Olympus (('couple of months from now')).>>
Thread reference
And also an announcement
here
One database????!?!!?!? Holy shit on a stick!
I can NOT believe that.
That reallty confirms my concerns about this place. One database means all thier eggs are in one baseket. I have 3 running for my little place. They should have one SQL database per board.
I think a backup is hopeless.
Moving would mean losing all data.
Just looking quickly at Xeran I think we can do better. The first plan that mentions MySQL is eUser which is $18.95 a month. I think we can do better than that. I will look into it further anyway.
Besides word of mouth looking up a host at various hosting review sites is a good thing to do so there arn't any surprises. I had found a host for my site that looked awesome but it turned out to be one guy and the worst customer service I have ever experianced in my time on Earth.
For phpBB a host must be a Unix server, have the latest php (I think it is up to 4.X), and MySQL databases. You really only need one database for one board.
I really wouldn't worry too much about space and bandwidth since the bottom rung of most hosts will be fine for this board which is pretty little and doesn't get much activity (relativly speaking in web terms). The board itself isn't big and I don't think you are expecting thousands of people to look at the board each day.
Ro, there is actually a way to run a virtual server on your computer. The info is on my other computer so I'll have to get that to you another time. Just as a warning it will take a lot of research to figure it out and run it. It was too complicated for me and I didn't feel like figuring it out at the time.
Just to give you an idea about what is involved in making your own temolate I found
this.
I don't know how much I can do right now since I really need to work on my own site right now. However I do think more discussion is required so everyone understands is confortable.
Since we can not move the data over then we could use anything, not just phpBB.
As much as I think this host sucks I don't think there is any immediate danger.
I think we should take our time. Research what is best. If we are going to put all this effort into moving it is important to do it right.