MyBB Community Forums

Very serious question ... I have about 80 people on my board that use this site. I have been away for years and still foot the cost - because I am glad they have the site and they use it. There has recently been an issue with the site (last 18 months) - I trouble shot it and it was the DB. Now that that problem is fixed:

Is there a way to update the site from 1.6.10 to 1.8.7 that won't hurt. I do not want to lose this board - we are friends for 10+ years and it is on me to keep it current, but I haven't. 

http://www.tribecygnus.net/ 

What are the steps I need to take to update. I am thankful for this help section. I do not want to screw this up. 

We have modded the boards years ago - probably around version 1.4 (2011). We did it through the ACP. Some images were uploaded as pointers. 

Honestly, I am super scared of losing info from the site with such a lax of updates (by me). I am back in the community now and see that I have some issues to deal with. I know each update deals with particular issues, is a jump that big from 1.6 to 1.8 - will it mess with things?

Thanks for any responses. I am super nervous about doing updating since we do have a stable version.

upgrading your forum to the latest version is not a difficult task.
you should take backup (both files & database) & upgrade your forum.

see upgrading guidance

which plugins you have in active status ?
also run file verification tool & check which files are changed

Be aware that your theme will no longer work. Also check any plugins that you really like or depend on still work in 1.8.x

Cool, so just upgrade to latest as the 1.6 to 1.8 doesn't matter. Not cool I imagined that all of the stuff we did way back then would probably not work. My fault on that though, will just have to piece it back together.

I really don't have a lot of plug-ins - so those shouldn't be a problem. Just loosing the look of the site temporarily will be a downer. Oh well, time to roll up the sleeves and get her done in the next few weeks (after backing up of course.).

Thanks for letting me know what to expect.