How to about some option to return the forum to stock version without loosing data. Or have restore points as in Windows to keep a back up option within the forum script ?
Good idea, but with this feature make it so when you click the button, it asks you to put your password in, for security and accidental purposes. Or like put the forums password or something, so that only the main admin can restore it or something. :P
A reset within the forum is quite risky compared to the number of times it may be used. IMO.
How many times would you use it? Maybe a couple while setting up the forum, and then... probably once for the whole lifetime of the forum (unless you are pretty unlucky :P).
Upgrade version is like a reset as well right?
Depends how you use it.
If you just upload everything over the existing files, any addon/other stuff that for a reason or the other you uploaded will remain there.
If you delete sources and themes and then re-upload, this will look more like a "reset" and anything extraneous will be removed.
The database is of course something completely different, because there may be:
unneeded tables,
unneeded columns,
* unneeded settings (including permissions).
In this case the upgrade doesn't do anything at all.
Then how/what to do depends on exactly what result you want to obtain.
I would also vouch for something like " Disable all plugins ". How will it help ? I will let you guess you guys figure it out :P
With this type of option, Elk needs to get to a point where all addons are just something that is dropped into a directory or something.
Yep, good point IchBin.
In other words it would mean deprecate code edits before being able to introduce it.
For the 1.x line it would be impossible in order not to break every addon.
In 2.0 could be not so unrealistic, but still a little tricky.
We do have the http://tools.elkarte.net/2014/06/database-cleanup/ utility available as well. This attempts (its not 100 %) to show tables, columns, and settings that are in your installation that are not "stock". You can then choose to remove them at your own risk.
/me feels dumb for forget it... :-[