MyBB Community Forums

Hi all,

I'll try to explain myself as briefly as possible:

A friend and colleague of mine has had his own website for a number of years. Until very recently, his hosting was provided by a referred acquaintance under typ03 on a shared account.

I have a number of years of experience with both computers (I worked in the games industry) and my own website business which I ran for a number of years. Hence, I have been helping him with advice and what assistance I can give since he is a complete novice however I am NOT an experienced administrator nor do I know very much about the of hosting, cpanel, php admin etc. Recently he decided to set up a forum on his website and as a result, has had to set up his own account and has given me full admin access to the backend in the hope that I can install a forum for him. I have access to both the cpanel cms on the servers, and the latest typ03 cms which has been installed and which we currently use for content creation and editing.

After unsuccessfully trying to create a forum using typ03 extensions, I was guided to this site after external reviews and comments. What I would like somebody to explain to me, is the following:

If I download myBB, am I correct in thinking that this is installed using phpmyAdmin under the cpanel?

If I do this, will the forum content created be integrated with the existing site content under typ03? or will the forum now exist separately and be linked from the existing site?

And most importantly: Since all of this is really a bit of a mystery to me, do you experienced users feel that I am completely misunderstanding both the nature and magnitude of what I am (as a newbie myself) undertaking to do - which is to implement a working forum "straight out of the box"?

Any advice, references, links etc at this stage would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Alan

Hi,

I might clear up some terms for you right now:
MySQL (server) is a database server where information is stored. CMSes and forums often store data in a database, MySQL being the most popular.
cPanel is a hosting control panel. Since this is a shared server, your cPanel interface is probably primarily used to do some administrative tasks, such as create MySQL databases, add domains, subdomains, emails etc.
phpMyAdmin is a web based MySQL server administration tool.

To install MyBB, basically you download the package, extract the archive, then upload it to your server, usually via FTP (note that MySQL being a database is not where you upload files and scripts; cPanel may have a file uploader, however it's probably simpler to upload with FTP). More detailed instructions on installing can be found here: [Wiki: Installing] (Broken link, head over to docs.mybb.com instead)

(2008-10-24, 09:35 AM)alan12345 Wrote: [ -> ]If I do this, will the forum content created be integrated with the existing site content under typ03? or will the forum now exist separately and be linked from the existing site?

The forum will be separate (MyBB is an independent script) from any other script you have on your server. If you look around, you may be able to find modifications/plugins which bridge MyBB with certain CMS systems.

Hope that helps.

Hey thanks, that helps.

So from the absence of further comment, can I take it that as a complete newcomer to all of this - and taking account of your advice and links, I could reasonably expect to perform said operations, and find myself quite able to create and manage a forum "out of the box"?

I don't mind the forum existing as a separate entity since it nicely sidesteps issues of combining the look of both parts of a site. I much prefer the clean look of myBB (as in this forum itself).

If it helps you to know, I can confirm that 'my' cpanel includes the following tools:

FTP Accounts; FTP Session Control; Anonymous FTP; MySQL Databases; MySQL Database Control; phpmyAdmin and PostgreSQL tools.

Thanks for your help, I'll confer with my colleague before proceeding.

(2008-10-24, 10:25 AM)alan12345 Wrote: [ -> ]So from the absence of further comment, can I take it that as a complete newcomer to all of this - and taking account of your advice and links, I could reasonably expect to perform said operations, and find myself quite able to create and manage a forum "out of the box"?

The link I gave above to step you through the installation process. If you have any further difficulties, you may ask for support here.

Hi again,

I do have a possible problem. I have used the link to the wiki install and have proceeded according to the instructions. Having uploaded everything with Filezilla, I have created a directory on my domain, inside which is a mirror of the 'upload' directory obtained by unzipping the download.

In the wiki instructions, having set permissions as asked, I note that to proceed with the install, I am supposed to locate the installer, which itself is located inside the "/install/" directory

The only files I can see inside this directory - having checked that the contents on my server are the same as those on the unzipped folder on my hard drive - there are three files namely index.php (listed as an application); stylesheet.css and upgrade.php

From the functions available under my cpanel, and if indeed this index.php file is intended to be the installer, I don't appear to be able to run it.

Perhaps I have misunderstood something, but I believe that I have, to date, followed all of the instructions correctly. Am I missing something, doing something wrong, or a third as yet unknown possibility?

Hope you can help.

You need to run index.php from your browser (go to it like http://www.example.com/install/index.php )

Brilliant, thanks - that did it.

I'm also happy to find that, as a complete novice to all of this - that you are all being so helpful and that it seems 'doable' - all very encouraging.

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One more question, if I may.

I have now successfully run the installer and it has finished. It has asked me to delete "this directory" before exploring the new forum. It might be an obvious question, but what is the directory it is referring to? The one I copied all of the stuff into in the first place? Or some new directory created during the install?

Sorry to be a noob, but I like to proceed carefully.

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Oops, sorry. Ignore that - I just found out. (note to self - READ THE INSTRUCTIONS properly)