I have a backup of a 10 year old IPS community forum. The backup file is ips_ab4a7.7z 

After I expanded the backup, ips_ab4a7, the following appeared in the root directory.
Folders: admin, api, applications, datastore, plugins, system, uploads
Files: 404error.php, conf_global, Credits.txt, error.php, index.php, init.php, sitemap.php
Will any of this allow me to view the forum in a browser. Or what must I do to see the old topics. My intention is to see the general format that I use to to display the general format and the flow of the site in general.
Bob

 

2 minutes ago, Bob Snow said:

Will any of this allow me to view the forum in a browser.

Not if you don’t have the database from that time as well. 

With the database be in any particular directory. I wouldn't have a certain name to it required by Invision Power PRG.

 

If I knew the code that would call the database, I could possibly search for that code.

Bob

42 minutes ago, Bob Snow said:

With the database be in any particular directory. I wouldn't have a certain name to it required by Invision Power PRG.

 

If I knew the code that would call the database, I could possibly search for that code.

Bob

Database would only be in folder if had been given backup directory for cPanel/full website and normal this found in main root folder under SQL or MySQL would mainly depend on what backup you have if just files from www or public_html

Your database backup would, or should, be a single file named xxxxxxxx.sql (uncompressed) or xxxxxxxx.sql.gz (gzip compressed). You’d need to use a program such as PHPMyAdmin, or SSH and the ‘mysql’ utility, to restore the backup.

I'm not so sure that backup is ~10 years old. That's a 4.x structure, and 4.x was released as a beta in 2014 and final in 2015.

You can see in conf_global.php what database the software was looking for, however whether you have a copy of the database backup is another question. It wouldn't have been on the filesystem unless you actually took a database backup and stored it on the filesystem, before backing up the files.

That filename looks to me as though it's a zip of a fresh download of 4.x files. It won't have the database with it if that's the case.