I've just reinstalled the application and I'm back on-line. I still don't know what actually did go wrong, but reinstalling was probably the easiest thing to do.
Even the application was not functioning, I was still able to open the administration page and managed to make a backup.
After reinstalling I performed a restore. This all went very smoothly!!! (Good functionality you've got here)
However, I did saw a big list with error messages concerning actions within the images directory. Here's a small list:
ERROR: Directory '/home/virtual/site210/fst/var/www/html/forum/images//home/virtual/site210/ fst/var/www/html/forum/images/custom_avatars' does not exist and the import script was unable to create it
Unable to open /home/virtual/site210/fst/var/www/html/forum/images//home/virtual/site210/f st/var/www/html/forum/images/custom_avatars/index.html for write
ERROR: Directory '/home/virtual/site210/fst/var/www/html/forum/images//home/virtual/site210/ fst/var/www/html/forum/images/custom_avatars/_vti_cnf' does not exist and the import script was unable to create it
Unable to open /home/virtual/site210/fst/var/www/html/forum/images//home/virtual/site210/f st/var/www/html/forum/images/custom_avatars/_vti_cnf/index.html for write
It seems that the code is generating incorrect path names.
I did noticed that a particular avantar that I've uploaded was gone after restoring.
Looking at the errors above I understand why.
However, I did not upload any other images or avantars which is probably why I don't have any problems in this area.