Prepare upgrade from 1.5 to 2.0 ???

[someone]

OK here's the deal...

How can I conviniently prepare an upgrade, rather than upgrade immediatly? Since upgrading will take a lot of time (creating new graphics, custom templates, bug testing etc...) I don't want my v1.5 version to be offline for days untill I finished the upgrade. I'ld rather make a copy of version 1.5 into a new directory and prepare the changes there.

Is there somehow a way to prepare the upgrade while the old board still is open & accepts new threads, topics, replies & members? How do I move the newer content (members & topics) from version 1.5 to version 2.0?

Any help is highly appreciated.

PS: I've made a copy of version 1.5, ran the upgrade1.php script onto it, and actually all the templates were replaces by the ones that come with version 2.0. EEK! What did I do wrong?

[tubedogg]

Firstly, any templates from 1.1.x are not compatible with the 2.0 system. They are saved as an old set for you to refer to, but you will have to start over with the 2.0 templates.

What I would do is make a dump of the database and restore it into a new empty database. Then upgrade that new database to 2.0.
Make all your changes to your templates and styles, then use the download style function to create a copy of your style.
Once done, upgrade your main board and use the upload style function to upload your custom style to your board.