Reinstall of vBulletin...how?

[KMxRetro]

Hi everyone,
I'm changing my site's design, and I'm looking to install vBulletin at a beta (non-public) domain so that I can create a new theme for it without disrupting my users.

Also, it'll give me a chance to get rid of all the hacks/plugins/modifications and start from scratch.

However, the current site will still run at my usual domain, with folks posting, logging on, playing games and the like.

My question is...once I'm done with the new design, what's the best way to get the users/topics/posts/forums from the old site, into the new database? Is it just a matter of copying the posts, topics, forums and users tables between the databases? Is there an easy way of doing this (I can do it in phpMyAdmin, but if there's a tool of some sort...

Many thanks in advance,