What to back up before trying mod?

[roshaoar]

Hello,

I'm relatively new to smf - in the process of choosing a board for my site. Looks like it's going to be SMF, it's awesome

But, testing out different mods etc, I keep having this problem whereby a mod and theme combination messes things up and even if I uninstall it it doesn't go back to how it was before. So I keep having to reinstall smf from scratch, upgrade, and reinstall the 30 mods I like. Which gets a bit old .

Can I ask is there a saner way to do this, ie to take a complete copy so that if new mod X messes it up I can just upload old copies of directories a/b/c ie what was working perfectly before?

Many thanks
-Johan

[Siirist]

Hello,

I'm relatively new to smf - in the process of choosing a board for my site. Looks like it's going to be SMF, it's awesome

But, testing out different mods etc, I keep having this problem whereby a mod and theme combination messes things up and even if I uninstall it it doesn't go back to how it was before. So I keep having to reinstall smf from scratch, upgrade, and reinstall the 30 mods I like. Which gets a bit old .

Can I ask is there a saner way to do this, ie to take a complete copy so that if new mod X messes it up I can just upload old copies of directories a/b/c ie what was working perfectly before?

Many thanks
-Johan

Hi,

Wish someone more experienced answered this.... I was almost quite experienced but my funding for my site went away for two years.
Anyway, I looked at "Online Help" (found at the top of every page) and then used the Frequently Asked Questions and found this Back-Up (and restore as well).

If this solves your problem, please mark the topic as solved (by going to the very bottom of this and clicking "Mark Topic as Solved"

Be Well,
Siirist

[margarett]

The easiest way is if your host offers a backup utility in your control panel, especially for the database.

If so, you do this:
* Duplicate (or zip), server side (through a file manager or so) the current forum folder
* Backup the database through your cPanel (or similar) database backup utility.
This takes you no more than 2-3 minutes.

Try the MOD, everything is cool, repeat for the next MOD experience (delete previous backups)
If/when things go wrong:
* Restore the datase through the same backup utility
* Delete your current forum files and restore the folder backup you did.

Easy

[Siirist]

Thanks Margarett! 
See? Support is AWESOME!! 
Just needed a little bump (always give 24hrs before bumping a topic by replying with "Bump")

[roshaoar]

margarett , thank you, I tried exactly this, I cloned an instance. But when I tried to restore it I found that something had altered the database and so the cloned instance simply refused to work - which is why I posed the question here.

[Illori]

without some details as to what did not work, we cannot really help you too much. most mods have some database changes so you can not just copy the files from one install to another without those changes in place.

[roshaoar]

Fair enough, I guess I can give up on this - it is a bit of a vague question, optimistically hoping for some easy answer. I'm very new to smf, been playing with many mods and the inability to recover after a DB change was killing me.

many thanks,

-Johan