Hi Gizmo
To answer the first question...
I followed the upgrade steps as per the document.
I unpacked the upgrade zip to a local store on my PC. I then FTP'd over the relevant files / folders.
When i ran the upgrade.php script the "Check files" process reported that the common.css file was missing.
A quick check in the unbundled zip and i spotted the css in the styles directory. I copied across this file, not the whole of the styles dir.
For the second question...
On my server i have all the ubbthreads installs off the main root under a hrmsaces sub dir. I have the original 6.5.+ system still present under ubbthreads. When i went to 7.2.2 i copied the whole lot over to ubbthreads7. This 7.2.2 site has been happily running for a year or so.
For the 7.4 upgrade i created a parallel install under ubbthreads740 using a new MySQL instance, and changed the config files accordingly. I tested this to ensure it all worked before upgrading this copy to 7.4
Once i was happy that the upgrade had gone well i then performed the upgrade on my live site under the ubbthreads7 sub dir.
So my server directory structure looks like this...
\hrmsaces
|
ubbthreads
ubbthreads7
|
<all the ubb files for this instance>
ubbthreads740
|
<all the ubb files for this instance>
my domain
www.hrmsaces.co.uk has its destination set to hrmsaces/ubbthreads7 under the doc root folder
I guess this is my own doing having not been up to date with housekeeping on the server etc, but i'm sure as hell stuffed at present