It is highly recommended that you remove old backups from your forum before creating a new backup.

I would love to, but I don't know where they are.  

You have successfully backed this forum up. It is highly recommended that you download the backup, located in the root directory, and remove it from your server.

Again, I would love to do this, but I don't know which ones to download? The forum folder? Blahdocs folder? Both??

Type slowly...My brain has been worked over time these last few weeks.

BTW, our board is up and running. We have gotten a lot of positive feedback.  

http://theswap.com/forum/Blah.pl?

If your backup is successful then it will be in the root of the forum with Blah.pl

That's my problem..I am not exactly clear on what you mean when you say "it will be in the root of the forum with Blah.pl." I know where blah.pl is. I know where the forum folder is. What am I looking for? Or do I just save the whole forum folder??

I told you I needed you to type slow.

Where Blah.pl is is the root of your forum. In there you will have the backup file if your host supports gzip and your backup is successful. If there is no backup file there then your host probably doesn't have gzip enabled and you would have to talk to them.

Thanks. There doesn't appear to be one, so that explains that.

There is another option, read this thread: http://www.eblah.com/forum/m-1158147685/s-0/highlight-cobian/#num0

I use it for a couple of forums where the host won't enable gzip

Okay...My partner called our server and her is what she PMed to me and it is a direct quote, Martin.

"We do have gzip enabled. He said it's part of unix and we can use it. Uh . . . that's all I know about that . . . didn't ask HOW we would use it or anything. I figured maybe Martin could help with that."

So, Martin, or anyone for that matter...Uh, what do we do now??  We are feeling like we are in way over our heads today!

edit: I found this on my ftp. Is this it?!

A file called www.*bunch of numbers*.gz located here: /usr/home/theswap/www_logs/

Is that the gzip file and the one I need to copy to my machine??

Changed a few permissions and it is now working.
There is a current backup called: 020708_full.tar.gz - This is the file you should download to your PC.

Thank you!!  

And make sure you delete it once you have got it from your server...

Can I ask why deleting it is important? I know it says "please remove old backups" but i don't understand why? I have a collection of them on my server with different dated names...  

Quoted Text

Can I ask why deleting it is important?

If you date or give a name to a backup, thats added security, but if most people just use the default "backup" name, then it would be easy enough to download the back up file. Security first and all of that...

I thought considering the archives are placed in the cgi-bin folder, they can't be downloaded? like the same reason the members .dat files can't be downloaded?  

If you don't delete them then do a full backup you'll also backup the last backup.  Or I think that's how it works.  Either way, it's good to remove it because that's a more public area, though you generally cannot download backups from the cgi-bin, some people do not have their /forum directory in the cgi-bin.

Oh, and your forum is going great!  I'm impressed.