Installing MyBB for Dummies
Forums are all the craze these days, and with prewritten forum systems like MyBB and phpBB out there it’s not at all hard to start your own online forum in no time! In this simple tutorial I will show you how you can make your very own online forum using the MyBB forum system, a collection on PHP scripts that, when uploaded to your web server, will make setting up and administering your forum easy!
Before we can start however, there is a basic set of requirements you need to meet before you will be able to start your journey along the long road to e-success, the are as follows, you must have:
- Some form of web-hosting, whether it be shared or your own (virtual) dedicated server with a LAMP stack, your web host will need PHP and the MySQL connection libraries for MyBB to work (obviously), but most, if not all payed hosts have this, don’t worry.
- A MySQL database, this is where the forum information will be stored (posts, threads, reputation.etc), you will need the database server, database name, user-name and password, and maybe even a port number, if they give it to you.
- A way of uploading to your server, in most cases you’ll need an FTP client to connect to your hosting providers FTP server, Filezilla is often a good choice, it’s free, open-source good stuff.
All right
, that’s about it, now you can take your first step by checking out the MyBB download page, from here you are able to download the MyBB ZIP file, this ZIP file contains the assortment of files that you will later need to upload to your web-server to get your forum started, so go ahead and click the ‘Download Now’ button and the download should start, wait a few seconds for the download to finish and simply extract the ZIP file to a directory somewhere (desktop is okay) and open the ‘Upload’ folder, this folder contains the files that need to be uploaded to your web-server, keep this open as we will need it in our next step.
Next step is pushing the files back up to the cloud, more specifically, uploading them to our web-server so we can actually install MyBB, the exact method of doing this will differ depending on your web-host, chances are your web-host will give you some sort of FTP access to your web-space where you are able to upload/download/change the permissions of files. If you are unsure about all of this simply ask your hosting provider, assuming you’re paying for your hosting I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to provide you with some FTP information. I’m going to make the assumption that you have your FTP host, user-name and password handy, simply fire up your FTP client (see requirements) and upload the contents of ‘Upload’ to your web-server, your web-host may require you to upload them to a special directory like ‘public_html’ or something, if your hosting provider didn’t tell you about this then you should be able to safely just put the contents of the ‘Upload’ directory into the ‘root’ directory of your FTP account. For client-specific instructions on how to do this see your client’s documentation. This might take a while, depending on your connection speed.
Once the all-mighty first upload has finished, you should be able to access your beautiful new forum by going to the forum URL, you were probably given this when you signed up for your web-hosting (e.g. http://somethingforum.com/) or whatever, so lets try it out. Oh what’s this? Internal Error? – Yeah that’s right, you still have more work to do, simply append ‘/install/’ (without quotes) to the end of the URL in your address bar to go to the MyBB installation wizard, which is easy enough and fairly straight forward, but I will guide you through it anyway, because I’m nice. 
. You will be presented with the nicest of landing pages, telling you what you’re doing there and whatnot, once you have read over the introduction page simply click ‘Next’ to get into the good stuff, you’ll also be presented with a license agreement that you can read through if you want, there’s nothing out of the ordinary there so you can just skip the headache and accept it.
Here we are at the MyBB requirements screen, this little script will test your server and see if it has what it takes to run the awesome MyBB forum system, if all goes well you will meet the requirements needed to continue your journey along setup road, but if for some reason the script detects that something is missing we will need to fix it. The solution to the problem depends on the problem itself, the single most common problem that people encounter is permissions issues, file and folder permissions are a painful, headache-inducing yet necessary feature of computers, and for one reason or another during your MyBB upload the permissions simply broke somewhere and we’ll need to fix this, the easiest way is just reading this MyBB wiki page that should give you some information about the whole permissions thing that I’m too lazy to do here, and hopefully some guidance as to what to do about your permissions problem. If the unthinkable happens and Apache/PHP is missing an extension/module that MyBB requires to run you’ll need to contact your web-host and ask them to install it for you, if you’re on your own server see the Apache/PHP documentation for instructions on module installation. When you’ve got everything fixed up you can continue…
Ahh database configuration, this is often where a lot of people get stuck, this is where we give MyBB the settings that are required for it to connect to your MySQL database and run. You should have your MySQL database information handy (see requirements), if you don’t take a quick look-see at your hosting providers control panel and see if they’ve given you any information, if they haven’t a simple support ticket should give you some insight. The database configuration screen is fairly straight forward (for me at least) and it should be for you, but if you’re having some problems I’ll guide you through it:
- Database Engine: This is the engine used to connect to your database (duh!), if MySQL improved is there go with it, if it isn’t plain old MySQL will do.
- Database Server Hostname: This is the hostname of your database server (once again, duh!), unless your host has told you otherwise your MySQL server is probably on the same box as your web server, if this is the case just enter ‘localhost’ (no quotes) and see if that works, if MyBB tells you that it can’t find a MySQL server contact your hosting provider for more information.
- Database Username: This is the user-name used to log-in to the MySQL server where your MyBB forum data is stored, this has nothing to do with your form account name or whatever, unless you have your own MySQL server your hosting provider has probably provided you with this information, check your hosting provider’s control panel for this information.
- Database Password: As with the database username, this was probably given to you by your hosting provider, check out the control panel for more information.
- Table Prefix: Unless you know about how MySQL works this won’t make much sense to you, you’ll want to change this from the default for security purposes, change it from mybb_ to haxxor_ or something because having a default table prefix makes SQL injection attacks a lot easier, change it!
- Table Encoding: Just don’t touch it, please.
You can just ‘Next’ the next few screens, they’re pretty much telling you that MyBB is populating your database with the ‘base’ MyBB data, everything should go well, if it doesn’t…Google it.
Now we are brought to the board configuration screen, this is where you tell the setup wizard some basic information about your forum, it’s even more straightforward then the last few screens, well…most of it anyway, I’ll guide you through it.
- Forum Name: This is dead simple, just give your forum a name, try and make it nice, grammatically correct and easy to look at, for example: I, and many others, wouldn’t join a forum called ‘xXxEl337__–__h4XX0RZ-__–___-pH0rUmZzZZzxXx‘, not only because any forum of the type is probably filled with script kiddies, but because the name is horrible and instantly proves that the administrator has no idea what they’re doing, because it’s just horrible for SEO, but whatever, you can settle with ‘Elite Hackers Forum’ I guess.
- Forum URL: In most cases you can just leave this as-is, if you change it you’ll have to move your files around and whatnot, so just leave it as-is.
- Website Name: This is useful for people who are making this forum as part of an existing site, for example if your ‘forum name’ was ‘ABC123 Forums’ and it’s part of your ‘ABC123′ site, you should set your site name to ‘ABC123′.
- Website URL: As with website name, this should point to your ‘main website’ (if you have one), for example if your forum was located at http://abc123.com/forums and your main website was located at http://abc123.com, you would type http:/abc213.com into this box.
- Cookie Domain: Don’t touch this, click the question mark if nothing is there.
- Cookie Path: Ditto.
- Contact Email: An email address that your forum users can contact you on, you probably don’t want to make it your private gmail or whatever, if your site gets much traffic you could have heaps of emails coming down the chute.
The next screen is again an extremely straight forward one, this is where you create your administrator account, (UID = 1), fill in the information here like you’d normally fill in a forum sign-up page. Choose a secure password though, don’t want to make it easy for people to guess your credentials!
Huzzah! – You’ve Finished! Your MyBB forum is now all nice and set up for you, read over the page you are presented with, this gives you a few handy links to get you started with MyBB, Enjoy!
My thoughts on the whole iPad thing
Well Apple announced their new tablet device (the iPad) at no surprise to the tech community after many months…even years of speculation and rumor circulating around the blogosphere about the tablet, and every possible feature and technical specification was explored, there were rumors of 9, 10 and 11 inch screens, a digital television antenna, HDMI in and out, and even solar panels. After doing some research (watching Twitter for three days straight) about what the tech community thinks about the iPad I wasn’t exactly getting an unanimous decision as far as everyone’s overall opinion on the iPad goes, which is expected, but I have seen a lot of people that just aren’t impressed with the iPad and from what I have gathered some people have made some assumptions about the iPad that aren’t right, and I thought that it’s my duty as the worlds biggest Apple fanboy to try and clear up any misconceptions about the iPad.
The number one thing I am hearing from iPad-haters is “It doesn’t have 
X, Y and Z, my laptop has X, Y and Z, why would I want an iPad?”, now in saying this you’re making the assumption that Apple is trying to ‘kill’ the laptop with this device, not once did Steve say in the event that this device was a ‘laptop killer’, in fact, Steve clearly stated (with pictures and all) that this device is supposed to fill a gap between the laptop and the smartphone, this device is meant to be used in situations where the task you are trying to complete is unable to be accomplished easily because of hardware or operating system limitations on the device, yet the task is ‘too easy’ for a laptop computer (opening it up, booting it up, opening your email client/web browser/media player.etc just to complete a simple task), this includes tasks like composing email, reading a book or a periodical, showing photos to friends, watching a YouTube video or even creating a simple presentation or spreadsheet.
Another thing I am hearing from iPad haters is “it’s just an iPod Touch with a bigger screen, why do I want that?”.
While the iPad is based on the very popular iPhone operating system it doesn’t mean that the target market is the same, I myself can see some very good reasons for Apple to put the iPhone operating system on their tablet computing device considering its target market, I will cover them here:
1) Stability: The iPhone is one of the largest selling smartphones out there, and Apple has put years of work into the underlying operating system (iPhone OS), it wouldn’t make sense for Apple to create ANOTHER operating system for this device, they already have Mac OS X and the iPhone OS, I don’t believe that anyone thought that Apple was going to create a whole other operating system when they made this device…they were simply going to go one way or another depending on what approach they were taking to marketing the device, I believe that the iPhone operating system is the best option for this because it is a very stable, intuitive, simple and well tested operating system that, with a few modifications to take advantage of the newly available processing power and screen size, is the perfect choice for the iPad.
2) Existing Large Application Ecosystem: It’s no lie that the iPhone/iPod Touch ‘App Store’ has been a huge success, there are thousands of applications available for you to easily sync to your iPhone or iPod Touch via iTunes or downloaded directly to the device using the iTunes Store App. At the event Steve stated that all iPhone/iPod Touch applications will be available to the iPad from day one, this means that the potential uses for the iPad grow significantly from the ones that Jobs demonstrated at the event. As well as all iPhone/iPod Touch applications being available Apple has released a development ‘kit’ that allows developers to write new applications that take advantage of the newly available features of the iPad (mainly the screen size) as well as the different target audience, this means that it’s op to the developers to decide what the iPad can be used for.
3) User Familiarity: Apple has sold over thirty million iPhones since it’s initial launch in 2007, as well as twenty million iPod touches (which uses a slightly modified version of the iPhone OS), this means that a large portion of people are already somewhat familiar with the iPad’s user interface, this is a great selling point for Apple as i believe that Apple intends for this device to be simple, easy to use, and ‘an appliance’.
4) SDK Similarities/Developer Familiarity: Since the operating system that the iPad runs on is practically the iPhone OS, the development kits or ‘SDKs’ (the ‘framework’ that allows programmers to w
rite applications for a specific environment, in this case the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch) are very similar, this means that the learning curve for developers that are already accustomed to developing for the iPhone/iPod Touch will be significantly smaller (if any) than it would be if Apple developed yet another darwin-based operating system. What does this mean? It means that developing applications for the iPad will be more attractive to a developer, it means that they will be able to develop and release applications faster, and it means that they will be able to easily redesign their existing iPhone application(s) to the iPad. In the end this means that there will be more applications in less time, a smart move on Apple’s part.
How is it different? Now, I am willing to admit that technically the iPad is a big iPod Touch and that the key technical difference here is the larger screen, but not everyone seems to understand that a bigger screen will cause a chain-reaction of differences in the long run (mostly how the device is used), think about it…you wouldn’t use the iPad for the same things you use your iPhone or iPod Touch for, Apple AND third-party application developers know this, the ‘App Store’ is an enormous part of this whole product and I feel that it all depends on the applications that are developed, the bigger screen size will allow developers to make richer, more ‘complete’ applications and this will affect how people use the product overall, if someone hears that product a can do x y and z and they like the idea of it enough they’ll buy it, regardless of the fact that it’s just a giant version of another product, once Apple discovers what kind of people are using the product and what applications are being developed they will be able to target a specific audience, instead of taking the ’scattershot’ approach that they (somewhat) did at the event.
What Apple has done ‘wrong’:
Now I’m admittedly a massive Apple fanboy, but I haven’t been fully encapsulated by Jobs’ reality distortion field so I CAN see some things that apple has done…not so well, but I can also see why they could have possibly made these decisions, I’ll list them here:
1) Unsure about their target audience: Apple seems to be unsure about their target audience for the iPad, they seemed to be focusing on people who may not be computer literate/find using a computer a big hassle and could complete most, if not all of their ‘everyday’ tasks on this device, that’s all fine and well, up until the point in the presentation where they announced that they were releasing an iPad port of iWork, to me this shows that Apple is deviating from their original target market, another example is the long-awaited ‘keyboard dock’ that a portion of iPhone users have been crying for since it’s launch. All this may not actually affect initial sales, after all it’s all about the application ecosystem now-days, they might just be trying to reach a broad target audience, I’m not sure, however this is not a reason to not buy the device.
2) No Camera: This is one thing I’m willing to agree with Apple haters about, but where we differ is I’m not going the absence of a feature ruin the whole device for me, that’s just stupid, anyway, back on topic. I, and many others, agree that Apple should have included a front-facing camera in the iPad, but then again how often does the typical ‘mom’ figure use the web-cam on their desktop/laptop, the only situation that I can come up with is the typical ‘talking to relatives from another state/country’ situation that Skype uses on many occasions, and for that purpose it would be great, but I honestly don’t see it being used that much, and think about how that would affect the prices of the product? – Ap
ple really made a stretch to offer the $500 ’starting’ price for the iPad but including the usual ‘Apple tax’ and putting a camera into the device would just not make that possible.
Would a camera really make sense for this device, one would think that you place the device on your lap for general use…but what happens if you incorporate a camera?…well you get to see what’s up their nose, I guess.
Note: It turns out that the iPad metal ‘frame’ contains a small ‘hole’ that the iSight camera from a Macbook Pro just happens to fit perfectly in to, a coincidence? a second-generation? a surprise? who knows?
3) Multitasking, or lack thereof: Just in case you’ve been living under a rock since the iPhone’s release in 2007 people all over the blogosphere have been complaining about the lack of multitasking support in the iPhone and iPod Touch, and since the iPad runs a modified iPhone OS it has immediately undergone the same criticism and complaints. There are a few third-party applications available in Cydia (the ‘unofficial App Store’) that allows multitasking and I must admit that it wasn’t that flash. My iPod Touch 2G didn’t exactly handle running multiple applications (e.g. a game and Safari) at the same time very well, now I understand that these can be two resource-intensive applications but so what? If Apple were to implement multitasking people WOULD try and do that, and they would have a bad experience with the device, but with the fairly new iPhone 3GS with a better specifications than its predecessors as well as the iPod Touch 3G (that, to my knowledge, uses the 3GS chips) I think it’s time for Apple to make the move to multitasking…at LEAST on the iPad with its A4 chip and all (maybe iPhone OS 4.0). Then again…how often would the typical iPad user (whoever that may be) use multitasking, I don’t really think that it’s worth implementing at the moment, I guess we’ll have to wait and see who this ‘typical iPad user’ ends up being.
Then there’s the usual crowd, the ones that are saying, “The iPad isn’t right for me, therefore it is a horrible stupid device and nobody will buy it because we are all alike!”:
Have I been trying to sell you the iPad in this article? No. I have simply been (trying to) put an end to the massive amounts of negativity towards what I believe will be a game-changing device, keep in mind that the iPod and the iPhone were met with similar negativity when they were first launched, I’m pretty sure that Apple knows what they’re doing by now and they believe that this product will sell, that’s why they made it after-all, you may not buy it initially, you may not buy it at all, that doesn’t mean that you should write the device off as a total failure, think different.
Overall, I believe that the iPad is a great device that will surely change the way we do things, whether it be watching movies or checking email, or maybe this is the kick-start that the ebook industry needed to really get going? Sure, Apple made some ‘mistakes’ in the products release and marketing, but that’s what happens when you (attempt to) start a market, you don’t really have anything to work on, and I applaud them on the job they have done, nice work, Apple.
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