SiteGround Tutorials
Invision Power Board Tutorial
Invision Power Board is a multifunctional discussion board application. It is written in PHP and requires a MySQL database. IPB allows theme customization and you can add numerous mods to the basic installation. IPB is not a free application any more, and you will need to purchase it in order to use it.
IPB Tutorial includes:
- Instructions on how to install Invision board on your website.
- Guidelines about your Forum Configuration
- How to change the skins (themes) in IPB
- How to add Emoticons and Avatars in IPB
- Expert forum hosting services for IPB websites with installation of the IPB application and free domain name.
Check our Invision board hosting services where you get free installation of IPB*!
* Please, note: IPB is a paid application. We will help you with its installation if you have a license for using it.
IPB Tutorial: Invision Board Installation
How to install Invision Power Board on your website?
Before you can actually start using IPB forum, you need to spare some time with the installation process which is pretty straight-forward.
Pre - installation Steps
Step 1: Database setup
Please check our MySQL tutorial to see how to create a MySQL database and user.
Step 2: Upload Files
You may uncompress the distribution file of the application on your local computer and upload all the files in the folder where you would like the board installed. You should make sure that they show in the directory in which you'd like to install the forum. Please check our FTP tutorial for more information on how to setup your favorite FTP client.
Invision Power Board Installation Process
Open your browser and navigate to the directory with the installation files. The address bar should read something similar to this:
http://yourdomainname.com/forum/install/index.php
You should click [Next] to proceed to the next page.
Here you have to read and agree to the license agreement. When ready, click on [Next]. You will be taken to the address details page. Normally the installation detects the settings automatically and you won't have to change anything here.
Click [Next] to proceed to the database details page.
In the fields for database name, SQL username and password you should enter the MySQL database, username and password you created during the database setup. You can leave the table prefix to the default ipb_ or change it to your preference. You can also leave the table type to the default MYISAM.
When done, click [Next].
On the next page you should fill in the details for the administrative contact.
Click [Next].
You are now ready to complete the installation. Click on [Start installation] to proceed.
In the final step of the installation process you will be automatically redirected through a series of screens. When done, you should click [Next] one last time :)
On the last screen you will see a note "Installation complete!"
Well done! You have successfully installed your IPB forum software!
IPB Tutorial: Forum Configuration
The first thing you would like to do after installing the forum is to perform some fine-tuning. We will deal with it in this tutorial section.
In order to start managing your forum, you have to visit the administration panel. The address looks like this:
http://yourdomainname.com/forum/admin
How to configure the email functions in IPB?
The first thing you can do is configure the email functions of the board. This can be done from Tools & Settings -> Email Set-up.
You should use SMTP authentication method and have a valid email box under your account hosted by SiteGround. The configuration should resemble the following:
Customize date & time formats in IPB
The server time cannot be changed. However, IPB gives you the option to set time offset. This can be done from Tools & Settings -> Date & Time Formats.
Click on the Native Server Time Zone drop-down box and select the correct time offset that corresponds to your time zone.
General configuration
Next in the list of adjustable settings is the General Configuration right below Email Set-up in the Tools & Settings tab.
The most important settings here are - Board Name, Website Name, Website Address - those are self-explanatory, the important thing here is not to end with a trailing slash "/" any of the URLs or paths to directories. The rest of the settings can be left to the default values.
Click on [Update Settings] at the bottom of the page when done.
User profiles
You can access the User Profiles menu by clicking on the link under your Tools & Settings tab.
The most important settings here are:
1. Allow HTML in signatures? - set to No to avoid unsolicited ad messages.
2. Allow BBCode in signatures? - BBCode is important part of every board and it's a good idea to have it set to Yes.
3. Auto prune all topic subscriptions if the topic has no replies over [x] days - you might want to set a number of days after which unanswered messages will be deleted from the board. It's a good idea to keep the database clean from junk data that might slow down the forum.
IPB Tutorial: Invision Board Skins
The Look & Feel tab in the admin panel allows you to fully customize your IPB forum. Skins must be chosen depending on your IPB version number. There are plenty of web sites on the Internet that provide free and commercial skins / templates for Invision Power Board forums. To name a few:
Invisionize.com is probably the best place you can search for templates, skins, modules, etc.
The installation of an IPB template requires a few steps.
Step 1: Click on Skin Import/Export and scroll down the page.
The Importing... section will allow you to import downloaded templates.
For that purpose, you need to de-compress the files to your computer first. The folder with the decompressed files should contain 2 important files that you need:
ipb_images-listed-images.xml.gz
ipb_skin-listed.xml.gz
Step 2: Import ipb_images-listed-images.xml.gz under Import Skin Images section and ipb_skin-listed.xml.gz under Import Skin XML. File names may vary but the point here is to make sure that you are uploading .xml.* files.
Step 3: After you are done importing the files, click on Skin Tools -> Rebuild Skin Set Cache to rebuild the cache of the new template.
Step 4: Go to Skin Manager and select the newly installed skin:
IPB Tutorial: Module and Component Management
Unfortunately, IPB does not have an automatic module management system. Each component is designed for a specific IPB version and comes with an installer tool and how-to-install instructions.
Here we will demonstrate how the add-on installation works with a component called 'Help Desk'. The Help desk component can be downloaded from here.
Please note that it works properly only on version 2.1.x of IPB.
The installation of the Help Desk add-on is pretty straight-forward - you should unzip and upload the component's files from the upload folder into the root directory of your forum. In our particular case that would be
http://yourdomainname.com/forum/.
Then navigate with your browser to
http://yourdomain.com/forum/help_desk_setup/
You will need to log in as the admin user:
Once you log in, you can [Proceed...] with the installation.
If all has gone through well so far, you should be able to see the component in the IPB admin area -> Components section, from where you can do the fine-tuning:
Some of the components that you will try to install will ask for 777 file permissions to be set. Please bear in mind that this will not work on SiteGround servers as it is insecure and the maximum allowed permissions on our servers are 755. However, the component should work fine with 755 permissions.
Other IPB components
The Components section within your IPB admin area gives you the option to purchase additional components. You can find more information about a specific component, as well as order it, by clicking Purchase and Information under the component.
IPB Tutorial: Module and Component Management
Gallery in Invision Power Board
Adding a gallery to your IPB forum can really boost your visitors' inflow. There are several options though. The easiest one that you can implement is to add a Invision Gallery which is developed by IPB's programmers and will not yield any incompatibilities with your forum software and can be easily administered from the admincp of IPB.
In this section we are going to discuss how to add Coppermine gallery to you forum. There is a bridge that links IPB Forum and Coppermine PG applications.
NB: You should have Coppermine application installed prior to installing the bridge.
Installing IPB-Coppermine Bridge
- Download the IPB-Coppermine Bridge
- Extract the files to your computer
- Upload invisionboard.inc.php to your bridge dir (if you have installed Coppermine through Fantastico the file will be already there). In order to use the bridge, you should make some changes in the invisionboard.inc.php file and enter IPBs database information:
define('IB_DB_NAME', 'database_username');
define('IB_BD_HOST', 'localhost'); //
define('IB_DB_USERNAME', 'username');
define('IB_DB_PASSWORD', 'password');
Please, check Invision Power Board Installation Process to see for your Database name and username (DB_NAME, DB_USERNAME')
- Upload login.php in the sources directory and you are set.
IPB Tutorial: Module and Component Management
Adding a blog to you IPB forum is an easy task to do. The blog tool you can add to your forum is called "Invision Community Blog" and can be purchased from Invision Power Services website. It can then be added from the Components section in your admincp.
IPB Tutorial: Calendar Mod
There is a built-in calendar module that comes with your IPB forum. You can administer it from the IPB admin area -> Management.
Click on Add New Calendar link:
Enter the required information. The settings you make will be immediately available on the forum's home page after you click on Add New Calendar:
IPB Tutorial: RSS Feed Mod
You can add an RSS feed to your forum from the Management tab in the IPB admin area.
You should click on RSS Import Manager and then in the right window click on Create New RSS Import Stream :
Enter the required information. You must fill in all the fields in order to activate the feed. In our example we will add Yahoo World News. You can view the links to all Yahoo rss feeds here. Click on an RSS button and copy the link location. You should enter the link in RSS Import Stream URL:
Another option you must define here is the Character Set encoding. Setting the value to UTF-8 will ensure that the feed can read almost all languages.
Next thing you should configure is the actual content options:
Important options here are the forum selection (into which forum you would like to display the feed).
- RSS Import Preserve HTML - if you have this option enabled it will preserve the original format of the RSS page. For this to work you must set Enable HTML Posting to Yes in the forum's settings.
- RSS Import Poster's Name - set this to a valid forum's user
- RSS Import Add Link to Post - you can leave this option empty
- RSS Import Topic Prefix - enter a name that will appear in front of the actual news
Finally you should enter news refresh rate (200 minutes is fine) and the number of news articles per go.
If you have created the feed correctly, you should be able to see your newly-created news feed topics in the forum:
IPB Tutorial: Emoticons and Smilies in IPB
Emoticons are symbols that use computer characters to convey emotion or tone in an electronic message. IPB gives you the option to pre-define them in the admin control panel:
Just select the ones you would like to be used in your forum and click on Update Emoticons.
Inserting emoticons can be done when replying to an existing topic or opening a new one. Once configured, the option will show the available faces (emoticons) in the user panel:
Avatars
An avatar is a graphical image of a user intended to make the network environment closer to reality. Avatars and photos' characteristics can be set from the IPB admin area -> Tools & Settings tab -> User profiles.
From there you can set permissions for image file extensions, Hot-linking (Allow users to use remote URL avatars), which is not a very good idea as some web sites have this disabled and hot-linking directly to them will result in an error. The rest of the options are self-explanatory :)
You can check the phpBB tutorial and vBulletin tutorial for further reference.
Please, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or recommendations about this tutorial at: tutorials 'at' siteground.com