phpBB3
Overview:
phpBB3 is the latest addition to the phpBB community. While the old phpBB2 was a simple but functional forum system that every body knows, phpBB3 is a lot more powerful and comes as competition to the costly InvisionPowerBoard (also known as IPB). phpBB3 is opensource, distributed under GNU/GPL license. All you need to run phpBB3 is a web server (I recommend Apache), PHP engine in it and a database server of course (I recommend MySQL). Have a nice forumming experience with phpBB3!
Installation:
This is the introduction page of the phpbb3 forum system. Please take some time to get familiar with it. I'm going to skip the next two overview pages (license and support), but you shouldn't. Click on the "Install" tab under the header to start the installation.
This is the introduction page to the database configuration. You're told what you'll need to enter as database configuration, so if you're missing some of those, contact your local server administrator or support staff. In the lower half of the page are listed the supported database servers. Make sure yours is supported, if not the phpbb system wouldn't run.
This is the full requirements list and a YES/NO field to tell if the requirement is met. All "required" features are mandatory. The optional features however aren't, though they are going to affect the system's productivity.
Please enter all the database settings. It's recommended to have a "table prefix" feature set up to avoid mix-ups with other web systems running on the same database.
If all the settings in your previous step are correct you should see what's on my screen - Test connection: successful. If not, go back and try to correct the problem. There should be an error message telling you what exactly went wrong.
Administrator account setup - here you'll register the very first account on the system - the administrator's. Note the length requirements of the name and password fields. Give a real e-mail, it may be used for contact by the users of the forum for any possible problem (like registration problems, spammers, etc.)
Another check screen, this time for the administrator account settings. You should have green light here.
This means that configuration has been successfully written and you can proceed.
Advanced settings: these are divided in to areas: E-mail and URL settings. E-mail settings tels phpbb how to send mails or not to send e-mails at all. URL configuration: secure cookies on or off, force URL, domain name and script path - for most cases the default settings that are already in the fields work just fine.
Database has been successfully created. Be happy :P
Congratulations! Your system has been successfully installed. Continue to the administration panel.
This is the first time your newly installed phpbb forum opens it's admin panel. Notice the large red rectangular area - it tells you to delete the install directory or the forum wouldn't work (only the administration panel will be accessible).
If you have deleted (or renamed) the install directory, your forum should be accessible and it should look like this. You can return to the administration panel and create some categories, forum and set some other settings like forum name and description and you're ready to start forumming!
