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| Phorum 5 Installation instructions |
| ================================== |
| |
| Contents: |
| |
| 1. Requirements |
| 2. Quickstart guide |
| 3. Detailed installation instructions |
| 3.1 Download Phorum |
| 3.2 Unpack the downloaded archive |
| 3.3 Place the Phorum files in your website's document root |
| 3.4 Create a database and a database user |
| 3.5 Configure the database access |
| 3.6 Run the web based installer |
| 3.7 Things to do after installing Phorum |
| 4. Additional issues |
| 4.1 Additional issues for UNIX (Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc.) |
| 4.1.2 Cache directory |
| 4.2 Additional issues for Windows |
| 4.2.1 Cache directory |
| 4.2.2 Problems sending mail to end-users |
| 4.2.3 Date formatting |
| 5. Support |
| |
| |
| 1. Requirements |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| |
| Requirements for running Phorum are: |
| |
| * A webserver; |
| * PHP, version 4 or above; |
| * A MySQL server, version 4 or above. |
| |
| If you do not run your own website, but have hosted your website with |
| a hosting provider, then please ask your hosting provider if your |
| account meets these requirements. |
| |
| |
| 2. Quickstart guide: |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| |
| This is the quickstart guide for installing Phorum, aimed at people that |
| are used to working with websites, PHP and databases. If you are having |
| problems following this guide, then please read chapter 3 instead. |
| |
| 1. Unpack Phorum into a directory below your website's document root; |
| 2. Create a database and a full-access database user for that database; |
| 3. Edit include/db/config.php.sample, save it as include/db/config.php; |
| 4. Open {phorum url}/admin.php in your web browser and finish the install. |
| |
| |
| 3. Detailed installation instructions |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| |
| 3.1 Download Phorum |
| ------------------- |
| |
| If you haven't already done so, download the latest Phorum distribution |
| from http://phorum.org/downloads.php |
| |
| |
| 3.2 Unpack the downloaded archive |
| --------------------------------- |
| |
| From Windows: |
| |
| If you have downloaded the .zip file, you can extract the |
| files from that archive directly using Windows XP's zipfile support. |
| If you downloaded the .tar.gz file, you will have to download an |
| appropriate tool for unpacking, e.g. WinZip (http://www.winzip.com/). |
| |
| From UNIX: |
| |
| If you have access to a UNIX shell, you can unpack the .tar.gz |
| archive using the following command: |
| |
| shell> tar xvzf phorum-x.y.z.tar.gz |
| |
| Or if the tar program on your system does not support the -z flag: |
| |
| shell> gunzip phorum-x-y-z.tar.gz |
| shell> tar xvf phorum-x.y.z.tar |
| |
| |
| 3.3 Place the Phorum files in your website's document root |
| ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| The document root for a website is the directory in which your site's |
| web pages are stored. If your website's URL is "http://www.example.com" |
| and you place the Phorum files in a directory called "forum" inside |
| your document root, your Phorum installation will be available at the |
| URL "http://www.example.com/forum". From now on, we will name this |
| URL simply {phorum url}. So if you see {phorum url}/admin.php, using the |
| example we mean http://www.example.com/forum/admin.php |
| |
| If the webserver is running on the same system as where you have |
| unpacked the downloaded archive, you can move the unpacked files |
| to your website's document root. |
| |
| If the webserver is running on another system, you will have to upload |
| the files to your website's document root. In most cases, you will use |
| FTP for this, but some hosting providers require SCP (secure copy, |
| which is more secure than FTP). If you do not know how or where to |
| upload the Phorum files, please contact your hosting provider. |
| |
| Security note: |
| (simply ignore this if it does not make sense to you) |
| There are software packages that require you to make files writable |
| for the webserver (using the infamous "chmod 777"). DO NOT DO THIS |
| FOR ANY OF THE PHORUM FILES. The webserver only needs read access on |
| the disctribution files, because all dynamic data is stored in the |
| database. If you run into problems running Phorum, it will never be |
| because you "forgot" to do "chmod 777" on any the Phorum files. |
| |
| |
| 3.4 Create a database and a database user |
| ----------------------------------------- |
| |
| Phorum stores all its data in a database. So you now need to create |
| a database. Officially, only the MySQL database server is supported |
| by Phorum, so we recommend to use MySQL whenever possible. |
| |
| If you have hosted your site with a hosting provider, then ask |
| your hosting provider to setup the database and a full access |
| database user for you. |
| |
| If you run your own database server, then you will have to create |
| the database and the user yourself. If you are using a control |
| panel, like phpmyadmin, then use that control panel to create |
| them. Else, you can use the mysql prompt to create the database |
| by issuing commands like: |
| |
| mysql> CREATE DATABASE phorum; |
| mysql> GRANT ALL ON phorum.* TO user@localhost IDENTIFIED BY password; |
| |
| Of course, for security reasons you would use your own user and |
| password instead. |
| |
| If you are unsure how to create a database and a database user, |
| please refer to your system documentation. |
| |
| |
| 3.5 Configure the database access |
| --------------------------------- |
| |
| After setting up the database, you'll have to tell Phorum how the |
| database can be accessed. This configuration is put in the file |
| include/db/config.php inside your Phorum directory. This file is |
| not in the distribution. Only a differently named sample file is |
| included. |
| |
| First, copy or rename the file "include/db/config.php.sample" to |
| "include/db/config.php". Now edit the config.php file to match the |
| access settings for the database that was created in step 4. |
| |
| If you run your website on a remote server, then either edit |
| the config.php file directly on that server (e.g. through a |
| UNIX prompt) or upload the file to the correct location after |
| editing it locally. |
| |
| |
| 3.6 Run the web based installer |
| ------------------------------- |
| |
| Now all is in place to run Phorum's installer script. |
| Open {phorum url}/admin.php using your web browser. This is the admin |
| interface, which will automatically detect that a fresh install has |
| to be performed. |
| |
| Follow the instructions on screen to finish the Phorum installation. |
| |
| |
| 3.7 Things to do after installing Phorum |
| ---------------------------------------- |
| |
| Now the installation is complete, test if the forum is working |
| correctly by opening {phorum url} in your web browser. If you run |
| into problems, please go to {forum url}/admin.php and click on |
| "System Sanity Checks" in the menu. This page will perform a couple |
| of system checks to rule out some basic problems. If problems are |
| found, please follow the instructions from the sanity checks page |
| to solve them. |
| |
| Login into the admin interface at {phorum url}/admin.php and check |
| out what settings can be done to customize Phorum to your likings. |
| |
| Customize the looks of Phorum to your needs by creating a custom |
| template. Instructions can be found in docs/creating_templates.txt. |
| |
| Read the additional issues for your system (below), docs/faq.txt |
| and any other files in the docs dir that may help you. |
| |
| |
| 4. Additional issues |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| |
| 4.1 Additional issues for UNIX (Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc.) |
| ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| 4.1.2 Cache directory |
| --------------------- |
| |
| In step 5 above (Edit Settings) There is an entry called Cache |
| Directory. the installer should set that to /tmp if you appear to |
| be running a *nix system. This will keep compiled PHP versions of |
| your templates in /tmp. You can change the cache dir if you do not |
| want to have your files sitting in /tmp on the server or if you see |
| error messages like: |
| |
| Warning: |
| fopen(/tmp/tpl-default-header-a72fb9dd20915e5953aa9b07d3eb3871.php): |
| failed to open stream: Permission denied in |
| /path/to/phorum/include/templates.php on line 184 |
| |
| If you change the the Cache Directory, the best bet is to set it |
| to ./cache and make that dir (that is already there in the Phorum dir) |
| writable by the web server. Most likely this means making it world |
| writeable (chmod 777). If you do not have access to the shell prompt |
| of the server and are using only FTP to access the server, please see |
| your FTP clients help on setting the permissions for a directory. |
| |
| |
| 4.2 Additional issues for Windows |
| --------------------------------- |
| |
| |
| 4.2.1 Cache directory |
| --------------------- |
| |
| In step 5 above (Edit Settings) There is an entry called Cache |
| Directory. The installer should set that to C:\Windows\Temp, if it |
| can detect you are using Windows. This should work for most modern |
| Windows versions. If it does not, you will see error messages like: |
| |
| Warning: |
| fopen(c:\windows\temp\tpl-default-header-a72fb9dd209153aa9b07d3eb3871.php): |
| failed to open stream: Permission denied in |
| c:\path\to\phorum\include\templates.php on line 184 |
| |
| You will need to change the Cache Directory. The Phorum team is not |
| very familiar with Windows as a web server platform. We can only tell |
| you that it will need to be something that the web server can write to. |
| Changing the Cache Directory to ./cache has worked for some. |
| |
| |
| 4.2.2 Problems sending mail to end-users |
| ---------------------------------------- |
| |
| PHP has to be configured correctly on Windows systems to be able to |
| send out mail. If this is not done, you might get errors and mail |
| will not arrive. What you need to do is edit the file "php.ini" (this |
| file holds the configuration for PHP). Find the sections that is called |
| "[mail function]". In this section, set the parameter "SMTP" to the |
| hostname or IP-address of the your SMTP server. If you do not know your |
| SMTP server, please ask your internet access provider. After this, |
| PHP will know what mailserver to use for sending out mail messages. |
| |
| If you have no access to the php.ini file and the system administrator |
| is not willing to update it for you, you will have to install the |
| SMTP module for Phorum. You can download this module from the module page: |
| http://phorum.org/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/wiki/ListOfModules |
| In the settings for this module, you can specify the SMTP server to use |
| for sending mail. When using this module, you will completely bypass PHP's |
| builtin mail system. |
| |
| |
| 4.2.3 Date formatting |
| --------------------- |
| |
| Windows does not support the date formatting function strftime() fully. |
| If your dates are not showing correctly, you have to edit your language |
| file ({phorum dir}/include/lang/<yourlanguage>.php) and change the |
| definitions for $PHORUM['long_date'] and $PHORUM['short_date'] in there |
| to something that will work for your system. We suggest using the |
| following definitions: |
| |
| $PHORUM['long_date']="%B %d, %Y %I:%M%p"; |
| $PHORUM['short_date']="%m/%d/%Y %I:%M%p"; |
| |
| Go to http://www.php.net/strftime for information on all available |
| formatting options as well as the formats that Windows does not support. |
| |
| |
| 5. Support |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| If you have questions about installing Phorum, please visit the website |
| http://phorum.org/ and ask the development team for help in the |
| Support forum. Also read the file docs/faq.txt for answers to the most |
| common questions. |
| |
| |
| |