do I just change permissions and upload the new files and run upgrade.php or is something else involved?
can I go from 1.12 to 2.0?
have you read Upgrading SMF (http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Upgrading) ?
yep. I backed up everything. I set permissions. I uploaded the zip file using cpanel.. unzipped the file in the forum directory. something did not work. instead of running upgrade.php it ran install.php... so I got lost... and the forum is now hosed.lol.
I did something wrong but not sure what.
I know what I did, I downloaded the wrong file. duh. will try this again. lol.. .