I need help To save forum information

[Wildflyer]

Hello, I am Dave Robinson, I am absolutely new to the idea of moving or saving a forum. And we only have until August 31
I have been a part of an electric model airplane forum called Wattflyer for 14 years. Now the hosting company, Internet Brands is dumping our forum and will permanently close it on Sept 1
We have formed Wattflyer2 on freeforums.net but it is not well setup yet.

I have been trying to help the administrator and now I am a global moderator, which I will admit, I don't know much about yet.

There is a huge amount of information on the original that we would like to save.
I have no idea how much space it would require to save the entire forum or if that is actually possible.
We would like the ability to import the layout and posts with maybe some modifications or not.
And we have some very long posts about what you need to know about electric RC airplanes.

Basiclly I need guidance on what to do.

Since we have only a short time to do this, I didn't go through this forum to read everything about it, I apologize for that.

[boco]

Well, here's the limited knowledge I have about the process. The exact process depends on the used forum software used.

First, you need to close the forum. No writing of posts, anymore. Continued writing access would keep the database locked.
Second, put the forum into maintenance mode, shortly prior to backing it up. This will shut off public access and only leave the admin backend accessible.
Third, you need to dump the forum's database(s). This is usually done through the admin backend or an external tool like phpMyAdmin, and will give you one or more SQL files, they can be multi-GigaByte in size with a very lively forum.
Finally, download the forum's files over FTP or SFTP. This is the only step you can do with FileZilla. If you do, remember to uncheck the "Treat files without extensions as ASCII file" and "Treat dotfiles as ASCII files" in FileZilla Transfer settings.

With the complete database dump(s) and the complete forum files, you will have a full backup of all the accumulated knowledge. This will buy you time even if the restoring to the new host takes longer than September 1st. Keep it in a safe place.

On the new host, there must be the same forum software running (or able to be installed). Conversion to a completely new forum software is usually a complicated process and not done often.

The exact process is special to your new host, and you need to ask them for help. However, with the backup steps you will ensure the forum isn't lost when the old host closes.

[Wildflyer]

Thank you very much, Boco.
I have copied all of that and sent it to the admin of our forum.
It seems it requires admin-level access and I don't have that.

Dave Robinson

[Wildflyer]

Hi, well Internet Brands did not give our admin full admin power, so there was no way to close and save the forum and IB refused to help.

A LOT of good information was lost. We had over 1 million posts. it is all gone.

Thank you for trying to help.

We are now Wattflyer2@freeforums.net
Trying to grow back.

Dave