phpBB Tutorial and Installation How To

This tutorial describes how to use the phpBB forum software with your NEXCESS.NET web hosting account. NEXCESS.NET specializes in hosting phpBB forums and this tutorial is meant to help you quickly setup your forum with our web hosting service.

phpBB is an open source forum script which means that you can use and distribute it as much as you'd like as long as you don't change it.

For the sake of this tutorial we'll assume that you own the domain 'johnsmith.com' and are setting up phpBB at http://johnsmith.com/phpbb/.

Follow these steps to complete the tutorial:

1. The first thing to do is to run through the SiteWorx MySQL tutorial and create a database for phpBB to use to store the information it needs.

   Create a database called 'phpbb' with a user named 'phpbb'. When you do this SiteWorx will prefix the database and user names with some text resembling your domain name.

   With our example domain of 'johnsmith.com' the database name is 'johnsmit_phpbb' and the username is the same 'johnsmit_phpbb'.
2. Download the latest version of phpBB from the phpBB website and unzip the contents of the zip file to your desktop using http://winzip.com.

   You should now have a folder which contains all the files and folders you need to install and run phpBB. Rename the 'phpBB2' folder to 'phpbb'. Upload the 'phpbb' folder to your web hosting account. You should do this using an FTP Program. If you need help with FTPing files, you can check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page.

3. Once the phpBB files and folders are finished uploading, you need to change the permissions on the 'config.php' file in order for the script to be able to write to it. You can do this using the CHMOD command in your FTP program. If you don't know how to do this, check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page. CHMOD the 'config.php' file to 666.
4. Now we're going to access the 'install.php' file so we can continue installing phpBB. In this example, we'll point to 'http://www.johnsmith.com/phpbb/install/install.php'. If you receive any errors, check to make sure you set the correct permissions on the 'config.php' file. You should be at this screen now:

   

   The fields in the 'Basic Configuration' section are all set to what they should be. You can skip this field. In the 'Database Configuration' section, you need to set these fields according to the information of the database you created in step #1. For this example, we'll set the fields to the following:

   • Database Server Hostname / DSN: 'localhost' - Stays the same.
   • Your Database Name: 'johnsmit_phpbb'
   • Database Username: 'johnsmit_phpbb'
   • Database Password: 'mypassword'
   • Prefix for tables in database: 'phpbb_' - Stays the same.
   In the 'Admin Configuration' section, fill in the 'Admin Email Address' field and the last 3 fields. The last 3 are for creating the admin account you will use to manage your phpBB forum. Once you have all the fields filled in with the correct settings, click the 'Start Install' button to continue.
5. Your admin account has now been created and the basic installation is finished. Your screen should look like this:

   

   The next step will be to login to your phpBB using the admin account you just created and manage the phpBB board how you see fit. Click on the 'Finish Installation' button to continue. Before you log in to your phpBB, make sure you delete the 'install' and 'contrib' folders and everything in them from your webspace so no one can run the install script again and change the settings of your phpBB. You can delete these folders using your FTP program. If you don't know how to do this, check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page. Your screen should look like this:

   

6. Once you've deleted the folders, click on the 'Log in' link to continue. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Using the admin account information, login to your phpBB. Once you have logged in, your screen should look like this:

   

   Click on the 'Go to Administration Panel' link at the bottom of the page to open the control panel and begin managing your phpBB. The phpBB tutorial is now complete.

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