Import content/export content options missing from forum module settings in DNN 7.1.2.In this case,what could be done to export the forum posts from our live website to a development site?

Which forum module are you using?

If you are using Active Forums, my recollection is that it doesn't support content import/export. I don't think that the old DNN Forum module does either. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this is because of the complexity of the data issues.

For sites that include extensive user contributed content, such as forums, your only real option is to copy the entire installation and install it on a development server. For upgrades, it's best to rehearse the upgrade process on a dev server and then do it live on the production site. MAKE BACKUPS before doing something like that.

Actually first we copied the same previous installation files(folder as such)from the live site server files into the new site server files.But it couldn't give the posts.That's why we tried a new forum installation in the new site and thought of exporting the posts from the live website.Is there any way of getting the posts from the live website?Forum module is not Active forum module.It is the previous forum module.

If you look around, you may find some code that will extract existing posts from a Forum Module installation. I think that there were some utilities created to assist moving from Forum to Active Forums. Maybe look in the AF support forum (activeforums.com and codeplex.com/activeforums) for help.

The post information is in the database, which is why you didn't move that.