In
Backing up your vBulletin forum I listed three ways you could make a backup; with vBulletin's built-in tool, with phpMyAdmin, and with the command line. There aren't any built-in vBulletin tools to restore your database because your forum is most likely completely borked at this point, so it's time to get cozy with one of the remaining methods.
Restoring your database with phpMyAdmin
Log on to phpMyAdmin. Ask your web host if you don't know how to do this.
Click on the SQL tab of the right-hand page.
On the SQL page, uncheck "show query here again", else you're going to get a huge page with the contents of your entire database.
Below that, click Browse and find the backup file on your hard drive. Click Go, and wait anxiously as it reads the file, dumps your current database, and replaces it with your backup.
Sometimes your backup file will be too big for phpMyAdmin to handle. When that happens you have to use the command line.
Restoring your database via the command line
Log on to your shell account. Ask your web host if you don't know how to do this.
Navigate to the directory with your last database dump.
If it's a SQL file, use the following command (replacing your username, database name, and file name with your own, of course):
Code:
mysql -u Username -p dbname < dbname.sql
If the file is gzipped use this command instead:
Code:
gunzip < dbname.gz | MySQL -u username -p dbname
Hopefully everything is all right now. Go check on your forum and if everything's working properly, have a beverage. If there's still a problem, post your question here on vBulletin Setup.
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