From the monthly newsletter - not sure if it answers your questions, but it might help.

Quote:

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The beta testing group for our new downloadable product has been assembled and testing will begin next week. We're getting increasingly nearer to our target date to release a beta version.

Just as a reminder here are a few notable points on the new product:


It's entirely new. This is not an upgrade, update or patch to UBB.threads™ or UBB.classic™. We will have import scripts released to make the conversion from your existing UBB.threads™ or UBB.classic™ possible, but this will not be simply an updated version.

The user interface will have a flavor similar to both UBB.threads™ and UBB.classic™, making it familiar and immediately easy to use. There will be no large learning curves - simpler is better.

Your existing license(s) will apply, as will your Member Area access.
Next month we'll have more news and perhaps some sneak peek screen shots as we get closer to the public beta release.

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Yap, saw that a day or two ago, thanks Ian. Looking forward to getting 6.5.1 installed by this weekend on a few sites, and really looking forward to seeing at least screenshots, if not a beta "functioning" board of the new product.

Two quick questions...

i) if this is the last (or nearly the last) release of UBBT, will anyone handle the remainder of the bugs still in place?

ii) I know we haven't even seen a beta of the new product (what will it be called anyway?), but when can we expect the first, proper non-beta release?

Keep up the good work, fellas! Looking forward to getting 6.5.1 installed by the weekend.

1) We may choose to do another release in the future to mainly fix any importer issues. We may choose to also fix other bugs in that release. (UBB.classic 6.7.3, for example, will be released in the coming weeks. It's mainly importer fixes, but does include a handful of bugfixes as well.)

2) I can't speculate on dates right now. There are no public dates set beyond the planned development snapshot release in late March. We do want to make sure to hit the "Spring, 2005" date that we've kept saying over and over...

Here's an idea that strangely enough hasn't been implemented yet, especially since it's such a simple one which I don't believe would require much code work:

What's the best way to keep the forum data safe? Answer: back up the tables regularly.

What's the easiest way to do this for the average user? Answer: use the 'backup tables' function in the CP.

Now this is something that we should all be doing, in my case I do this every fortnight. Some of you might even be doing this on a weekly basis, or even more regularly (damn, this sounds like I'm writing about something else... ).

Obviously the best time to do this is when the forums are the LEAST busy, which is probably when you users are fast asleep. There's only one problem - having to manually switch the board off and on again.

When I hit 'Submit' and start my table backup at around midnight... I have to wait until 2:30-3:00 AM so that I can switch the board back on before crashing out myself. Why isn't such a simple task automated? Why can't the table backup feature automatically close the board when it starts... and then reopen the board after it's finished with everything?

PHPmyBackup

which one?

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pmbackup/
http://www.normsland.co.uk/phpmybackup/
http://www.m-tecs.net/?a=products&b=pmb&c=en
...

This is the one I use: http://www.normsland.co.uk/phpmybackup/

Fair enough if you use an external program, but why can't the built-in module simply turn off the board and then turn it back on again?

The external program doesn't open/close the board. You still need to open and close it via the UBB.threads control panel.