The layout of your blog is mostly contained in the files in your skins/your_skin folder. The content (including categories and blog structure) are in your database, so you want a database backup to make it happen.

I use cpanel's option for 'backup' AND go in to phpmyadmin and use 'export' to get two copies of the same database figuring one will work the way I want it to elsewhere. The first method gives me a file called 'database.gz' where database is the name of my database. For exporting I click 'select all' and the boxes for 'add drop tables' and 'add if not exists', then 'save as file' and it gives me 'domain_database.sql' for the backup file name.

So you backup from your host, connect to the new one, and upload backup to the new database location. After that you have to make sure the files for the new blog point to the new database and (of course) the new baseurl. If you want to restore from the .gz file you have to rename the file to match the new databases' name, so like 'database.gz' might get renamed to 'newdb.gz'. Anyway you get to use the 'backup' utility to do a restore. Easy breazy if it works...

To restore from the .sql file isn't so easy, but you don't have to rename anything. In phpmyadmin click on the 'sql' option, then open your .sql file in a text editor. Copy huge chunks of it and paste it into the sql field and tell it 'go' or whatever. Bit by bit you'll rebuild your database at the new place.

This will include your hitlog history and all your posts, so you might want to backup your own blog (so you can restore it later) then delete all your hits using the summary subtab on your stats tab, then maybe delete lots of your posts. This is mostly to reduce the file size of the backup you want to transfer, but it's also sort of a smart idea since you don't need that stuff in the new location. Anyway after you delete tons of stuff (using your blog's back office) you make the backups you're going to share, then restore your blog from your full backup.

Oh and any links that are part of a post (like images and smilies) will point to the original location. I'm pretty sure someone shared a quick method to "find and replace" in a database, but I end up doing it one post at a time until I'm done.

It's probably easier to just do an installation, create blogs and cats to match your blog, then copy over the skins/your_skin folder if that's part of the plan.

Thank you very much for your help.

It sounds a bit too in depth for me, I will print your post and give it a go when I have more time.

In the mean time my friend can sort his own material out and copy and paste my text if he wants.

Cheers

Steve