Create copy / working mirror of existing website

First of all make a working mirror of your existing forums

In MyPhpAdmin make a copy of your forum dbase, I called mine forums-v4
In your Cpanel filemanager, make a copy of your entire forums folder, I called my copy /forums-v4

Now edit the config for the new location

In your new mirrored location (ie /forums-v4) , edit conf_global in the root and change each mention of the old location to the new location (so in my example, anything that said /forum was changed to /forum-v4
It is ESSENTIAL you also change the dbase, to use the new copy you made, not your working version. The field for this is shown below.
‘sql_database’ => ‘dbase_forums-v4’,

Okay so now if you browse to your new mirrored forums at /forums-v4 it should all load up and run fine, a working mirror of your own forums, with new files and a new database.

IPB licence :

When performing the upgrade, if the upgrader asks for your license key, add it but remember to use -TESTINSTALL immediately after the license key. 1234567890-12345-123-12345-1234567890-TESTINSTALL