Welcome to the Freeola Internet customer support pages. This guide is designed to help with installing phpBB 3.0.5 software. For more Internet help topics please visit our main Support Page.
phpBB is a standalone discussion board (forum) written in PHP. It includes features such as posting/replying/editing messages, private messages, private forums, user and anonymous posting, robust theming, user ranking by posts or by special, admin definable ranks, and much more.
Important:
phpBB is database driven so a MySQL database is essential for this service to run, perfect if you have Unlimited VIP Hosting and a MySQL database.
Alternatively you may be using our Free Hosting service, for this type of hosting you will need our Freedom MySQL service. You can find information regarding this service from the Optional MySQL Database page in your MyFreeola account.
Log-in to your MyFreeola account.
Select Optional MySQL Database from the left-hand menu. On the following page select which type of database you currently have (either VIP MySQL or Freedom MySQL) or sign up for the relevant service. You can then select to View or Edit your current databases.
You will now been shown your MySQL database information (Username and Password), you will need to make a note of these details, as they will be required to set up phpBB.
Whilst we are logged into your MyFreeola account, we will need to obtain your FTP details. You can find all of your FTP details from the My Websites page, and then selecting the web site you wish to install phpBB on. If you do not have a site already you can add one by pressing the Add New Web Site button, once you follow the appropriate steps you will be given your FTP information.
You're now ready to download the phpBB installation files, these can be obtained from the phpBB web site. Once you have downloaded them, extract them to a local directory on your computer.
We now need to upload the files that you have just extracted on your computer. You will need to upload the files to the htdocs folder, you can upload the files to a sub-directory if you wish. We generally suggest to upload your files using FileZilla.
For instructions of using FileZilla to upload your files please refer to our FTP guide.This step is only relevent to VIP Hosting users, if you are using the free hosting, please skip ahead to step 8.
Once the files have uploaded successfully, you will need to change the permissions of the config.php file. You can do this by right clicking on the file in FileZilla and selecting File Attributes... You will then need to change the number that you can see to 777 and click Ok.
You will also need to change the permissions of the following directories to the numerical value of '777': store/, cache/, files/ and images/avatars/upload/.
Now you will need to visit the phpBB3 Install folder location at your web site address. If you've just uploaded the files to the htdocs folder then you would need to visit http://yourdomain.com/, if you uploaded to a sub directory then it would be http://yourdomain.com/yourfolder/. Obviously for this example you will need to replace 'yourdomain.com' with your own web site address or domain name.
You will now be shown the phpBB installation page, you will need to choose the Install tab from the top menu as you can see below.
The requirements page will ensure that your web space is suitable for the phpBB installation, if you have completed the above tasks (Step 7) then you will see the Start Install button from the bottom of the page.
You will now see the database configuration page, where you will need to supply your MySQL database information. This is the information that you would have obtained from step 3 of this tutorial.
You can see a completed example below
| Option | Description |
| Database type: | Generally you can leave this at the default setting (MySQL/MySQL with MySQLli Extension) |
| Database server hostname or DSN: | For VIP MySQL with VIP Hosting you can set this to "localhost", for Web Freedom this needs to be "mysql.freeola.net". |
| Database server port: | This field can be left blank. |
| Database name: | You should have written your database name down earlier, if you haven't you can find it from the VIP Hosting page of your MyFreeola account. If you are using Freedom MySQL this will be your SR number, which can be found on the "Optional MySQL database" page of your MyFreeola account. |
| Database password: | This password would have been supplied at the same page in your MyFreeola account as your database name/username. |
| Prefix for tables in database: | This is very useful if your looking at having multiple installations of phpBB on your web site. You can leave this as default if you just want one installation. |
Once you are happy that you have supplied the correct information, press the Proceed to next step
button at the bottom of the page. Once you have done so, you will be told whether the connection was successful, or whether information needs correcting.
Once you have completed your MySQL setup form, you will be shown the Account Configuration page, here you need to supply information for the Admin account of the forum.
| Option | Description |
| Default board language: | As this option suggests, you can choose the default language for your forum, by default the only language you can use is British English. If you wish to install more languages click here (link here soon) |
| Administrator username: | This will be the username that you will use to login to the Administrator account on the forum, this username can be whatever you wish. |
| Administrator password: | Here you will need to enter the password to this Adminstrator account. |
| Confirm administrator password: | You simply need to repeat the Administrator password into this field. |
| Contact e-mail address: | This E-mail address will be assigned to the Administrator account. This is necessary so that if you forget your password you can recover the account. |
| Confirm contact e-mail: | You simply need to repeat the Contact e-mail address for verification. |
Again once you have completed the form, press the Proceed to next step button where you should be told the configuration file has been written.
We have now completed the interactive part of the installation, all that is left is a few confirmation pages. You can skip right to the bottom of the page and press the Proceed to next step button once more.
The next page will inform you that the databases have been created, you can simply then press the Proceed to next step button. You will now need to remove the Install directory from your web folder, and change the permissions of your config.php file back to 644.
Congratulations, you've finished the installation of phpbb3. Not sure what to do now? Have a look around the phpbb3 forums, you will pick up tips and advice from there. If you need to uninstall phpbb3, simply remove the files uploaded at step 6.
