Installing phpBB

  1. Create a MySQL database on your server. Ask your webhost if you are not sure how. You will need the database information to install Urdu phpBB.
  2. Download the Urdu phpBB zip file.
  3. Unzip it. You'll see a directory named phpBB2 and lots of files and folders underneath it.
  4. FTP everything (in binary mode) in the phpBB2 folder to your server. Let us say you uploaded it to a directory such that the files in the phpBB2 directory are accessible at some URL like http://www.example.com/urdubb/.
  5. Using the ftp interface, rename the htaccess file to .htaccess (that is, a dot followed by htaccess).
  6. Open the URL from step 4 (http://www.example.com/urdubb/ in our example) in your browser.
  7. You will see a page titled "Welcome to phpBB 2 Installation". There are multiple sections on this page. Let us fill them one by one:
    • Basic Configuration
      • Default Board Language: Urdu
      • Database Type: MySQL 4.x/5.x
      • Install Method: Install
    • Database Configuration: You will need information about the database you created in step 1 in this section. Fill in the information as asked. If you are not sure about "Prefix for tables in database," leave it as it is.
    • Admin Configuration: Here you are creating an administrator account.
      • Admin Email Address: Enter an email address for the person who will be administering the board.
      • Domain Name: This is generally correctly guessed by the installer. However, do check to make sure it is the domain name where you installed Urdu phpBB.
      • Server Port: Usually 80. It is guessed by the installer. Do check.
      • Script path: This is the path relative to your domain where phpBB resides. If you installed in the home directory of your webspace, this should be "/". If you used the URL (http://www.example.com/urdubb/) in step 6, then it should be "/urdubb/". This is also guessed by the installer, but do confirm that it is correct.
      • Administrator Username: Enter the username for the administrator. This is what the administrator would use to log in to phpBB.
      • Administrator Password: Enter a difficult to guess password for the administrator account. Be sure to remember this password.
  8. Press the "Start Install" button to start the installation.
  9. The installation script will create and populate all the necessary tables. It will then attempt to write to the config.php file which will contain the basic configuration data used to run phpBB 2. If the installer cannot write config.php directly you will be given the option of either downloading the file or even FTPing it to the correct location. If you choose to download you should then re-upload the file to your server, overwriting the existing config.php in the process. If you attempt to FTP via the install script you should supply the requested information. Should FTP fail you will be able to download the file and then re-upload as described earlier.
  10. Once the install is done and you have copied config.php (if required), you should use ftp (or ssh/telnet) to delete the install and contrib folders from the server.
  11. Now, you can open the main phpBB URL (http://www.example.com/urdubb/ in our examples here) and login as administrator with the user name and password that you supplied during the install process.
  12. To configure phpBB and to create forums, please read the appropriate sections in the phpBB User Guide.

Other Documentation

You might also want to read the phpbb documentation for more details: