[FearlessWeeder]

Yes, I am trying to think this through to the best of my ability. I don't particularly want to rush through just to get a forum up as that most assuredly could spell failure. I did use the Admin Demo provided by vBulletin a few days ago. Good to know I can specify up to three email addresses for priority support to gain access to support.

What is the fee for Jelsoft installing the software for my dedicated server/host man? He's been so kind to me that if there is something I can do to make his life easier, I'd like to do so... if it's affordable. Oh how I wish I had a money tree out back to hire people from this site to do all this "technical" stuff!

fattony69 and blind-eddy, your comments meant the most to me. Thank you for taking the time to reply here. Should mention I don't know anything about HTML either. If you two want your laugh for the day, I just found out that the acronym HTML did not stand for Hotmail but for hypertex markup language. I do know how to cut and paste as of the recent past so that would be a step in the right direction.

Would it be to my benefit at this phase to spend time at sites such as this-
http://www.w3schools.com/html/
http://www.lanw.com/html4dum/h4d2e/html4du2.htm

Bet there's a coding for dummies site out there somewhere too.

Any other sites someone could recommend that might be able to provide me with a basic understanding would be appreciated.

As far as the installation of modifications, presumably somebody here would be able to talk me through the process or I would be able to use the search feature for that particular modification to be able to try it on my own? I have thought about this and it would be my intent to add the few modifications I have an interest in before the board is made available to posters. My thoughts are that if I screw something up... worse case scenario is that I re-install the underlying software. Would I be correct with this thought process? No time like when there are no members to experiment and screw up royally. I tend to learn more from mistakes than I do from reading about how to avoid them.

Regarding the unavailability of a built-in reliable backup option for vBulletin, thank you for your candor Marco van Herwaarden. I personally would not have appreciated learning about vBulletin's deficiency after there was a problem. Let's discuss third party utilities please. Are there threads here where they are identified and discussed? If not, would those reading this thread be so kind as to provide me with the names of these products and a brief synopsis of how they could work for me? I'm not necessarily looking for a hand out so if there is a third party application out there that is superior for backing up that isn't free, I'd most probably be amenable to paying for it.

It would appear archiving is obsolete. Thank you for your explanation.