Installing and Configuring phpBB Bulletin Board
1. Sign in as root
2. Make sure you have a network connection
3. We will need to create a MySQL database to install the phpBB Bulletin board. Open your
browser and navigate to http://localhost/phpmyadmin. Log in as root. (*Note that you should
have changed the password during the initial install, but if you didn’t, the password will be
blank).
4. Now go back to the Home screen and click on the “privileges” link.
5. Click the “Add a new User” link.
6. For Username, put “phpbb”. For Host, put “localhost”, for password, put “phpboard”
7. Under “Database for user”, select “Create database with same name and grant all privileges”.
8. Click “Go” at the bottom of the screen
9. Now point your internet browser at http://www.phpbb.com .
10. Click on Downloads, then click on “Download Stable Release” then under “Download Full
Package” , download and save the phpBB full package zip file.
11. Find where you downloaded it-probably Places, then Downloads. Double-click on the zip file,
then click on the Extract button to unzip it; extract it to the Downloads folder.
12. Copy the extracted phpBB3 folder to the folder you created as the default folder for your web
server in var/www (it should be the one named with yourlastnamefirstinitial, for example,
tripps in my case).
13. Change the permissions on config.php to be writable by all (666 or -rw-rw-rw) by right-clicking
on the file, clicking on properties, clicking on the permission tab, and selecting for Read and
write, Read and write, and Read and write (See screenshot)
14. Change the permissions on the following directories for the file access to be read, writable, and
executable by all (777 or -rwxrwxrwx ), and apply permission to the enclosed files (see
screenshot below):
store/, cache/, files/ and images/avatars/upload/.
15. Using your web browser visit the location you placed phpBB3 with the addition of
install/index.php or pointing directly to install/, e.g. http://localhost/phpBB3/install.
16. Click the INSTALL tab.
17. Scroll down and click on “Proceed to next step” (see screenshot)
18. It will run a test for compatibility; it should be fine since we installed LAMP to begin with (Linux
Apache MySql PHP). I generally like to take a screenshot or print out a page like this before
continuing so that if there is a problem later, I can refer back to it. Scroll down to the bottom of
the page and click on “Start install”.
19. For the database type, choose MySQL with MySQLi Extension. For Database server hostname
put “localhost”. Leave Database server port blank. For Database Name, put phpbb, for Database
username, put phpbb, and for database password put “phpboard”. (**Note: if you used
different settings when you set up your database earlier in the tutorial, you will need to modify
this accordingly). Leave the prefix for tables in database as phpbb_. Then click on the “Proceed
to next step” button at the bottom of the page.
20. It should come to a page that tests the database connection; it should say “successful
connection”. Click the “proceed to next step” button.
21. It will come to the “Administrator configuration” screen. Enter “myboardadmin” as the
username, “phpbb100” as the password, and your e-mail address as the contact e-mail, then hit
the “Proceed to next step” button.
22. It will check the administrator settings; it should say “tests passed”. Click the “Proceed to next
step” button.
23. It should come to a screen that says “The configuration file has been written.” Click the
“Proceed to next step” button.
24. This will bring you to a settings screen. Generally I would leave these as default. The only
exception would be if I wanted to use a different mail server, in which case I would need to put
in the SMTP server address, authentication (usually plain), SMTP username, and SMTP
password. For example, I might have “smtp.yahoo.com” for the address, sstripp@yahoo.com
for the username, and whatever my e-mail password is for the password.
25. Click the “proceed to next step” button.
26. It will tell you that the database tables have been created and populated with initial data. Click
the “proceed to next step” button. It may take a little while to load the next step.
27. It should come to a “Congratulations!” screen. You may want to follow the “Documentation”,
“support forums” and/or “README” links and bookmark them for later reference.
28. We now need to “Delete, move, or rename the install directory before using the board”. If the
directory is still present, only the Administration Control Panel will be available. So, close the
browser, go to your Places menu, then Computer, then File system, and navigate to
var/www/yourlastnamefirstinitial/phpBB3.
29. Right-click on the install directory and rename it to ZZoldinstalldirectory.
30. Now right-click on config.php and click on Properties. Click on the permissions tab, and change
the permissions on config.php to be writable only by owner (644 or -rw-r--r--) (so owner should
be read and write, group should be read-only, and others should be read-only)
31. Now go back to your browser and go to http://localhost/phpBB3/
32. The phpBB bulletin board should come up with the default screen that looks something like the
one pictured below:
33. Click on the “Administration Control Panel” link at the bottom of the screen (note: if you do not
see this link, log in as administrator (user myboardadmin, pass phpbb100), then scroll down).
34. If it asks you to log in, log in with the Administrator user and password we created above
(myboardadmin for user and phpbb100 as password). Once in, click on “Board Settings” in the
menu on the left hand side, and change the site name to “Your Name’s Bulletin Board” (for
example, “Shari Tripp’s Bulletin Board”), Site description to “Board for Web Server
Administration”, Time Zone to “*UTC-6+ Central Standard Time”, then hit the Submit button at
the bottom of the page.
35. We also want to set it so our new users can post without needing the post approved. Click on
the Forums tab, then in the menu click “forum permissions”. Then click on your forum “Your
first forum” and click submit.
36. Under Groups, click on “Newly registered users” and click “Edit permissions”. Change Role to
“Standard Access” and then click “Advanced Permissions”, then click the “Misc” tab. Be sure the
“Can post without approval” is “Yes”. Then at the very bottom of the page, click “Apply all
permissions”.
37. Click on “logout” (at top of the left hand menu) to log out from the board, and if needed, click
“Board index” then click on the “Register” link to create a new user.
38. When creating the new user, use your name for the username (for example, sharitripp). For the
e-mail address, use one that is different than the one you put for the admin e-mail; if you do not
have two e-mail addresses, use stripp@icc.edu as the e-mail address. Use NewUser1 as the
password.
39. It will take a little while, but then it should come back with an information screen that says
“thank you for registering, your account has been created.” Click on the “return to index page”
link.
40. Log in with the account you just created (not the admin account).
41. If it doesn’t automatically redirect you, go back to the home page
42. Click on the “Your first forum”.
43. Create a new post that says “Test for Web Server Admin Class” for the subject, and “it works!”
for the message and submit it.
44. For the lab, take a screenshot displaying this successful post (similar to the one below) and
submit it:
45. Of course, if this were a real forum, you would want to rename the forum, create new forums,
etc. You would do this by logging in as the administrator and clicking on the Administration link
at the bottom of the page. For more documentation on using the board, see:
http://www.phpbb.com/support/documentation/ .
46. As a final security cleanup, now that we are sure the board is working, go to Places, then
Computer, then File System and navigate to var/www/yourlastnamefirstinitial/phpBB3.
47. Find the ZZoldinstalldirectory folder that you renamed earlier, and either delete it or move it out
of the web server directories to somewhere not accessible by the web server.