On the next update of the forum software their should be an option where it will automatically backup the MySQL database and put it to a directory you want on your computer. But it should first run a series of tests. 1. if it can post. 2. if it could read someones profile. 3. and some other things just to make sure the forum is working right before it backs up the mySQL database. Thatway if your on a vacation and the forums go out you would have a pretty good mySQL database to backup.

On the next update of the forum software their should be an option where it will automatically backup the MySQL database and put it to a directory you want on your computer. But it should first run a series of tests. 1. if it can post. 2. if it could read someones profile. 3. and some other things just to make sure the forum is working right before it backs up the mySQL database. Thatway if your on a vacation and the forums go out you would have a pretty good mySQL database to backup.

I can tell you that this is hard to do with just PHP, and the simplest method, if your on a shared hosting account is not possible.

Plus those tests don't make alot of sense, because it would be hard, considering every forum is different.

If you have access to CRON jobs, you can find scripts that will back up and even mail or FTP the backup elsewhere at regular intervals. I use one that dumps, Gzips, and then FTPs the file to another server I own...then removes the local copy.
For the test? Definitely non-trivial.

Implementation shouldn't at all be hard. consider taking phpMyAdmin's export module, then using the mail() function with the output attached (it will require more work to split the gzipped database into files smaller than <#X#>kb and then sending but again with zlib installed that's not a problem)