Before I know how to ask my question, I need to know what XOOPS does after I tell it to stop pulling the template from the cache and start pulling it from the actual theme folder.

I know that template_c stores the pages, but I'm not sure what happens and where it pulls the themes from if you tell it to not pull it from template_c in the control panel.

Does it do any databse accessing whatsoever? If so, what tables does it access, and what folders within the site directory does it try to access / change etc.

Any insight would be helpful, as after I try to update the theme my newbb module comes up with no content at all.

XOOPS does not access the database for theme files, it gets and caches them from the theme's directory. XOOPS does however access the database for blocks and templates. xoops_newblocks and xoops_tplfile, xoops_tplsource,xoops_tplset I believe are the tables of course change XOOPS to your prefix.

Thanks for the hint. Do you ever sleep?

Another question I have, is what are the absolute necessary db tables needed to repopulate a fresh XOOPS install with just the users, forum posts and news posts from a nuked install?