phpBB :: Knowledge base - Viewing article Uniserver and phpBB Installation Tutorial for Home Development Environment

WARNING: This article is now outdated, due to UniServer using PHP5. phpBB 2.0.x is not supported on PHP5.

Ok, here is a tutorial that will have you up and running phpBB on your home computer in no time. This tutorial does not, however, explain how to get a domain name to point to your computer. There are a few rules for this tutorial being easy however.

1. You generally must know how to use a computer and navigate folders and files.
2. Knowing how to use phpMyadmin helps, but is not required, as I have images to go with the tutorial.
3. If you don't know what a database, or PHP is, then I suggest you go read up on what they are before installing anything having to do with either of them.

Alright, to begin the tutorial, I have downloaded UniServer 2.6 from http://miniserver.sourceforge.net and unzipped it to my computer.

I also have downloaded phpBB 2.0.6 from http://www.phpbb.com to my computer and extracted the folder to my computer in an easy to find place.

1. Double click on Uniserver2_6.exe and follow the on-screen prompts for extracting the necessary files to your desired folder. Image Here

2. You will find a Uniserver2_6 folder where you extracted all of the necessary files.Image Here

3. You want to start the server now so that you can start the other services such as mySQL. So click on this icon (Image Here) and the server will start. Don't close the window that pops up, just minimize it.

4. You then want to open your web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer) and navigate to http://localhost and read the instructions there. Alternately, you can go into your diskw folder that is in the Uniserver2_6 folder, navigate to the "cgi-bin" folder, and delete it's contents. Also go back to diskw, navigate into the "www" folder, and delete all of it's contents.

5. You then navigate your browser to http://localhost/a/ and get comfortable with that location, as it's your server administration panel. If you click on "Run MySQL Server" it will obviously start the MySQL service on your computer. Conversely, if you click on "Stop MySQL Server" it will stop the service.

6. We want to click on the phpMyadmin link. Image Here.

7. What you should see next is a page that says "Welcome to phpMyadmin(version number here). Image Here

8. We want to create a new database. Name it "phpbb" without the quotation marks. I named it "phpbb" because that's easy to remember right? Image here. Make sure you click the "Create" button. You should now see the following in the phpMyadmin left hand frame. Image Here

9. Now is when we start getting involved with phpBB.

10. We want to copy the entire phpBB2 folder that we extracted from the .zip file earlier to the "www" folder inside "diskw" in the Uniserver installation. Image Here

11. What we need to do next is navigate to the phpBB installation in our web browser. http://localhost/phpBB2/install/install.php should be the correct link. Image Here

12. On *nix systems, you will need to CHMOD config.php to 777 during installation and back to 644 after installation. For more information on the CHMOD command, please use Google to search for it.

13. You need to enter the database information into the blank fields in the installation. Your database name is going to be the name of the database you just made, which in this case, would be "phpbb" without quotation marks. The default database username for Uniserver is "root" without quotation marks. Enter that into database username field. The password field is to be left blank because the Uniserver database has no password be default. On any host that you might pay for webspace from, or even free hosting, your MySQL database will ALWAYS have a password. You then need to fill out Admin Email Address, Admin Username, and Admin Password.

14. If you've gotten all your information correct, you should hit Submit. You should see a button asking you to Finish Installation. After hitting that button, you should go into your phpBB2 folder and delete the "install" and "contrib" directories. Deleting just the contents will not work as you need to delete the entire directories.

15. Click on the phpBB logo in the top left hand corner of the website, and you should then be directed to either the administration panel, or the index. If you are not logged in, go ahead and go login with the administrator username and password you setup during installation.

16. I recommend using a .htaccess file inside the "www" folder of your Uniserver to prevent anyone from outside of your computer from viewing/accessing anything on the server. For more information on using .htaccess please use Google to search.

This is the end of the tutorial, and you should now have a general idea of what you are doing with Uniserver and phpBB installation. For more information on changing settings and customizing phpBB, please read the documentation provided with phpBB, or visit http://www.phpbb.com.