From experience forums have their own 'export database' facility inbuilt, or atleast all I've used have. Failing that it's possible to export specific databases (not the same as "home directory backup" option). This is usually fairly quick and easy and ensures your forum database is backed up, I'm assuming your forum doesn't use DBM text files.
The 'structure' of the
website hosting can be manually stored/backed up via FTP, I believe what 'flesso' was refering to. (The forum software I use has a nice option to tar up a copy of every file in the forum, making for an easy download of only a couple files.)
As a general rule of thumb, make a weekly database backup, and each time you modify the
website hosting files keep a local backup. It seems like a rather boring task to regularly do but from experience it saves for a lot of headaches when something goes wrong. The good news is from recollection eUKHost do make/keep their own backups.
I personally don't think I've ever used the 'home directory backup', in part as I have a local copy of all files and also as it doesn't backup the all important databases.
