upgrade jitters

[saw]

I run a forum using 1.0.2. I'm afraid to upgrade because I've made all kinds of little changes to various files, mostly by cutting and pasting code, and don't know what the affect would be (the If it ain't broke don't fix it approach). I'm fairly clueless technically and unfortunately don't have the time or talent to become less clueless. It's a small but busy forum; its users seem very fond of it and I don't want to mess things up for them (or me).

I'm wondering if someone might give it a look and tell me if they think I'd have any problems upgrading.

Also: I have a question regarding .php security, prompted by a letter from my host.

Please contact [email protected] if you can help.

Thanks.

[nokonium]

Is your theme a modified default theme or a modified copy of the deault theme?

If you have an intact default theme (unmodified by you) then you should be OK.

Do you have any mods installed? You will need to uninstall them before upgrading.

Do you have a test site to try it on first?

As 1.1 is not far away (charter members have 1.1.4beta) could it wait until that becomes a stable issue?

[Isaac]

You should make a back up of all your forum files, and the database, and attempt to update. 

[saw]

Is your theme a modified default theme or a modified copy of the deault theme?
If you have an intact default theme (unmodified by you) then you should be OK.
Do you have any mods installed? You will need to uninstall them before upgrading.
Do you have a test site to try it on first?

I haven't installed any mods, but as I say, I've made numerous small changes in the code. I don't know if these qualify as "mods". I don't actually know if I have a modified default theme or a modified copy of the default theme. I do have a test site to try this out, but haven't made the same modifications on that one so don't know that it would truly be a good test.

More members are starting to have problems now, a typical one being the following, encountered while attempting to PM:

"You don't have permission to access /forum/index.php on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

I should add that I'm quite willing to pay someone to look into this for me. I can't afford a lot, but whatever you think is fair.