• Lesson Index:
• Overview
• Installation
• Admin Panel
• User Rank
• User Registration
• Admin Email
• COPPA Regulation
• User Admin
• Adding Forums
• Member-Only Forums
• Moderators
• Disable Forum
• Backup Database
• Admin Password
• Upgrades
• phpBB Skins

Installation:

First thing you need to do is to download phpBB software from http://www.phpbb.com/downloads.php

If you are installing for the first time, download the Full Package option. If you are on a PC, I typically would download the zip package. If you already have a forum installed and are upgrading to a newer version, see Upgrading.

After download, unzip to local disk and upload it to a directory where you want your forums to be. Typically you would put it in a directory called "forums" on your webhost so that people would then access the forums via http://www.yourdomain.com/forums

For the purpose of these lessons, we will assume that you place the forum in the forums directory.

On your webhost, you need to set up a MySQL database and an user on that database with full priveleges.

When you run the installation by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/forums you will see the following install screen..

It is typical to put "admin" as the Administrator Username. This user is known as the site admin and is the most powerful user on the forums.

A successful installation will write out a config.php file that contains the passwords and database name you had just inputted. You may have to upload and overwrite the config.php file that is in the forums installation directory.

Delete the install and contrib directories

After the install, make sure you delete the install and contrib directories from the forums directory on your webhost. This is an important security measure. In fact, the Administration Panel will not work if you fail to perform this step.

To save space on you webhost, you can delete the docs directory as well.

More Information

You will find more detailed installation instructions at http://www.phpbb.com/support/documents.php?mode=install and also through the User Guide.

If you run into questions, search through the Knowledge Base or ask their Support Community.

A Working Forum with One User

Congratulations! You now have a working forum with one user -- the site admin that you had specified in the install. The site admin can login as a normal regular forum user by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/forums

However, there will be times when the site admin needs to perform setting changes to the forum. We will learn about the Admin Panel in the Next Lesson.