I agree Fawp, no doubt this is my fault too, I got lazy, and didn't make the back up like I usually do. I will not happen again. 

But, I do blame the developers!! Its their product and it should be tested before release, I understand some bugs are hard to find, and may not be found until after release, but here we are talking about membership sign up, and new members accounts working properly this should have been check thoroughly before it was released IMO, and the fact that it wasn't, is the developers fault. Nobody else's. 

Also, this software is free yes, but that's the watered down version of wpforo, I have a fully upgraded version with all add ons, and it wasn't cheap. If i got this forum software for free, id be less inclined to complain when things like this happen, but I am a paying customer, I think I am well within my rights to complain when something as big as this happens  

And to add, I really like this software, wpforo is the best forum software I have found, and i have looked at a lot, it's a shame to see simple things like this tarnish their name. This could have all been avoided if everyone checked the software properly before releasing it.

Still, this wont stop me purchasing more updates in the future for the forum either, I do like Wpforo a lot, and the team in the forum here is always very helpful. But it doesnt change the fact that this was a big mistake to let slip through so many fingers. 

How many hands does it go through before it gets to us? The main developers team, then the wpforo team, i'm not sure, but it should have been picked up by some one IMO.

Just to add, I might own that website, but I am not a web developer, im not a professional, i have built the site and learned as I went along, so still make mistakes and still learning a lot too. This was a mistake i won't let happen again. In future ill do back ups, wait for the uploaded to be tested by others before downloading it myself, and then even test it on a staging site.

Sorry this is getting long, but I will add, the timing of this was terrible, and that has made it worse. I started a competition to bring in new members on september 1st, and loads of people were signing up, then this happened. Now I know that's not Wpforos fault, they didn't know about that, but it does add to my frustration. 

Thanks for your input everyone, I appreciate it, I hate to come across like this, I prefer everything to go smoothly, but incompetence annoys me, this should never have happened, the developers, and wpforo, need to check updates harder before releasing them. And of course, I need to be more careful in the future too. 

Well, it sounds like you knew what to do already but failed to do it!

I find it hard to blame the developers, especially when they provide great products for free.

But this is not the only reason why I don't blame them: software is complex and no developer can predict the myriad of plugins that may interact with their own and have an adverse effect.

Professionals would never update a live site with a new piece of software without having tested it on a dev/local/offline environment first, and certainly not before testing all the major features beforehand. They also have reliable backup copies.

The reason for that is that in IT development things will often go wrong because of complexity: testing stuff beforehand and having backups is the only way to mitigate that.

Thanks Sofy good to know. Maybe the PHPmyadmin thing updated itself?

Thanks for taking the time to check it over for me, I'm glad everything is working fine, It a lot of stress when things don't work right, i sure you understand, thanks for the helping getting everything back up and running

Ill take Massimo's Advice onboard and not update so quickly next time. Especially if it comes on a weekend. 

Your website was checked by our developers. No errors are found. Everything is working as it should. 

Sorry, I didn't know if you'd need all access, ill change that now, my apologies

Please make sure we have Administrator User Role. Currently, we're admin only in wpForo.

I'll update the topic asap. 

Thanks you Sofy, illl do that right now 2 mins