Kinda asked this about a week ago but still am interested in upgrading to latest release and need to know if I do the upgrade how to keep preferences/modifications and existing users and posts etc. In other words if I upgrade am I back to square one with essentially a new empty site or will my stories, users, votes, language mods etc. still be the same only with new added features/functionality?

I saw the how to upgrade sticky where you chmod certain files backup your config files -- will that save all the work I've done on the site so it stays/looks/funtions the same as it is currently? And all I would do is install the newest version overtop the existing 9.0 on my server?

Sorry if this is a silly question but I would rather not lose the progress on my site to date... and am being cautious