phpBB Tutorial

phpBB is the most widely used forum script currently on the web. This free and very powerful piece of software is easy to install and administer and allows flexibility in terms of design and organization. With SiteGround hosting you can use all phpBB features.

This phpBB tutorial will help you learn how to manage your discussion board. Below you can have a look at the topics we have included.

How to use phpBB forum software

• How to install phpBB on your website / hosting account;
• How to administer your forum;
• How to manage your forum groups and users;
• Learn how to change your phpBB template;
• How to add smilies and avatars in phpBB;
• How to backup your phpBB system;
• How to upgrade your phpBB to latest stable version.
• We have included a link to our PHPNuke tutorial in order to help you integrate phpBB and phpNuke;

With SiteGround phpBB hosting services each customer receives a free installation of phpBB on his/her website. Our support team has acquired serious experience in the phpBB software and will make sure your forum runs trouble-free! At SiteGround you will also find free to use phpBB templates, which our designers have contributed to the phpBB community.

You may use this tutorial for your own use. You may not distribute it in any form without the express permission of the publisher. You may provide a link to the publisher's web site, where this tutorial can be used from. This tutorial is provided free of charge and without any warranty of any kind.

phpBB Installation

How to install phpBB on your hosting account

Get a FREE phpBB installation with SiteGround PHPBB hosting Package!

To start the installation process, please log in to your your cPanel. The cPanel Button is located in your customer area under Manage Account. Once in cPanel, look for the smiling face icon of Fantastico () and click it. From the list of scripts that appears to the left, please select the phpBB link.

A short description of the board will appear. Locate the New installation link and click that.

The first thing to select is the domain name you would like to install the board to (this is only applicable in case you have more than one domain name, pointed to your account). The Install in directory box can be left empty in case you want to have your forum as the starting page for your website (http://www.yourdomain.com/.); you can specify a directory, e.g forum, in case you want to have your phpBB installed at http://www.yourdomain.com/forum.

Next, please select the username and the password for the forum administrator (password can be changed later on from the forum configuration panel).

When filling the Site name and the Short description fields, please remember that those will appear in the header of each page of your forum.
Do not forget to set the administrative e-mail address to the desired one, and select the working language of the board.

When done entering the information, please click the Install phpBB2 button. The next page will confirm the installation details. Please proceed by clicking Finish installation.

You will be taken to a page with the addresses of the forum and the administrative panel of the board.

Please bookmark the addresses of the forum and the administrative panel, as you will be visiting them frequently.

Good job! You have successfully installed your phpBB forum application!

phpBB Administration

General Administration: Configuration

In order to start managing your forum, please visit the administration panel. The address looks like this:

http://yourdomain.com/forum/admin/

Please note you will need to authenticate yourself twice in order to be able to reach the control panel. This is a security feature that makes it a bit harder for one that would try to overtake you forum.

After being authenticated you will be taken to the Administrator's index. Statistic information about the forum will be displayed, as well as the version and details about the users currently online. You will also see a number of administrator function portals in the column to the left.

In order to configure the forum, please go to the Configuration link in the General Admin section. Here you can change the domain name, the name and the description of your website.

In case you are disabling the board during maintenance, please enable it again prior to logging out, otherwise it will become inaccessible.

The Enable account activation regards the way new user accounts are activated. The default setting is None, but we recommend the User level - an e-mail with an activation link is being sent to the user's email. The Admin setting requires that the forum administrator activates the new user account. The rest of the options do have their effect explained. Please note that turning ON the Gzip compression may result in part of your visitors not being able to see updates.

The last section of the configuration deals with forum related e-mail delivery. Please only change the Admin e-mail address and the Email signature. SiteGround has optimized its servers to work with the default settings of phpBB.

When done editing the forum settings, please click the Submit button at the bottom of this screen. You can notice the changes by clicking the Forum index link in the Administration section.

phpBB Administration: Avatars and Smilies

How to add smilies and avatars in your phpBB message board?

In order to add a new smilies (a.k.a. emoticons) you should first login to your administrative area. Usually the administrative area can be found in a subdirectory named 'admin', so if your message board is being hosted on http://example.com/phpbb, the administrative interface should be on http://example.com/phpbb/admin/.

Once logged to your administrative area, click on Smilies from the General Admin menu. The menu is located on the left side of your screen.

Once you are inside that area you have a few options depending on what you are trying to achieve:

• add just one smilie;
• import a whole smilie pack;
• create a smilie pack.

Let us take a closer look at the first option.

Click on the button Add a new Smilie and wait for the page to load. You should see something like this one:

In the smilie code field you should type the sequence of characters that will be used for the smilie to show up, for example the "smile" emoticon is ":)" (without the quotes), so place what you desire to use for accessing that smilie inside that field.

The second field is the so-called drop-drown menu, you should select the image for the smolie from this menu.

Please note that you should have the image uploaded already inside the images/smilies subfolder of your phpBB.

The last field is for typing the description of the smilie. For example, for the normal smile emoticon this field is "Smile".

You are now on one click away from adding this new smilie to your message board, the only step that has left is to click the "Submit" button and you are ready.

Congratilations, you have just added your smilie to the message board.

If you want to add an avatar to your forum, you should connect to the FTP and upload the new avatar(s) to the images/avatars folder.

Please bear in mind that the permissions of the new file should be at lest 555 (if you are being hosted on linux) or read+execute (if you are being hosted on windows - the so-called asp.net hosting service)

phpBB Administration

Forum Administration: Categories and Forums

In phpBB there are options to create new categories and forums, or to edit the existing ones. First off, let's turn the Test category into a live one. Click the Edit link that is on the same line as the category name.

On the screen you are taken to, you can type in the new category name in the box provided. Clicking the Update button will apply the change.

You can change the name of the existing forum the very same way: by clicking the Edit link opposite the forum name. Aside from the name, you will need to enter a description, and select a parenting category - the new forum will appear under that.

You can select whether the forum will be locked (accessible to administrators and moderators only) or unlocked (accessible to all members). The Auto-pruning function is optional. When done, please click the Update button.

When you return to the Forum index, you will notice the new way your forum is organized.

You can also add brand new categories and forums. This can be done through filling in the boxes next to the respective button:

When done creating categories and forums, you can visit the Forum index to see the new additions.

Using the Move up and Move down links you can entirely rearrange your forum.

Creating a new forum category is done through filling the box in front of the button with the desired category name and clicking the button. Same applies for creating new forums. You will notice there are New forum buttons for each and every category. Please note that subcategories cannot be created.

phpBB Administration

Group Administration and Permissions

Next thing to do is creating groups in your forum. These are needed when you would like to differentiate user privileges, like giving moderator privileges to certain users. To start that, select the Management link in the Group admin section. You will need to create a group first, since phpBB does not come with pre-created user groups.

The characteristics of a new group are its name, description, the moderator you select for the group (can be looked up through the Find a username button). Last, select whether the group can be joined by additional users, or is closed.

When done, please click the Submit button at the bottom of the filed.

You will be able to later on change the details of a group - when you return to the group administration panel, select the group you need. You can change the group moderator, add a new one or delete the group.

We will now set the group Permissions through the respective option in the Group admin section. Select the group you are looking for and click the Lookup Group button. In the panel that appears, you will be able to select in which of the forums will the group members will be moderators.

When done, click the Submit button to apply your changes.

In addition to group controls you may have individual privileges set up for every user in your forum. To do that, please go to the User Admin section and click the Permissions tab. Select the user, whose privileges you would like to edit and click the Look up User.

Aside from the user type, you are able to set access permissions to any of the forums that are currently active. After setting the privileges, please click the Submit button.

phpBB Administration

User Administration and Permissions. Ban control

You can also set up individual privileges to users. To do that, please follow the Permissions link in the User Admin menu. Type in the username you would like the change the privileges for and click the Look up User button.

The next screen will allow you to change the access level of the user, as well as edit his moderator privileges.

Clicking the Submit button will apply the changes immediately.

Through the Ban Control link you can deny access to users by different criteria: be it username, e-mail address or IP address.

It is important to remember that banning an IP address will disallow all users, who use that IP, to view your forum.

Styles Administration: phpBB templates

How to change the Template of your phpBB Forum?

SiteGround web hosting has released great-looking phpBB templates for personal and business sites, which you can download and use FREE of charge!

In order to change the template of your forum, you will first need to download the desired template's files to your local computer. They usually come as a compressed file, so make sure you unpack that on your machine. The result should be a folder with the template's name, containing two other folders and a number of files.

When the extraction is done, connect to your web hosting account using FTP. The FTP client will display you the files and folders you have on your website, and there you will be able to upload the new theme. Open the www folder and then the directory, where your forum is located. Look for the templates folder and upload the extracted content of your archive there.

Wait until all the files are transmitted to your account.

When the upload is complete, please go to the Styles Admin menu. Select the Add link. Your newly uploaded template will appear. Click the Install link.

Next, please go to the Configuration link in the General Admin menu. Scroll to the Default Style option and select the new template you have just installed.

When done, please go to the bottom of the configuration screen and click the Submit button in order to make your new template active. Enjoy!

phpBB Backup

How to create a backup of your phpBB forum?

If for some reason you want to archive the current state of your forum that is powered by the phpBB2 message board system, you should first login to your administrative area.

There are a few options how to create your backup:

• Full backup;
• Structure-Only backup;
• Data only backup

All of them will provide you with a valid backup of your website, but depending on what backup exacty you want - you should select a different option.

The most widely used option is the Full backup, as it provides you with the full database backup of the forum, while the other options contains only part of the database.

For example, the "Structure-Only backup" will provide you with the structure of the database (structure of the tables), but will not provide you with the data itself.

In order to backup the database you should login to your administrative area and click "Backup Database" from the menu that is being displayed on the left side of the screen.

Now you should select the backup type that you would like to download on your computer and click the "Start Backup" button.

The form that you should see is something like the one below:

Please note the "Gzip compress file" option, as it would compress the backup file before sending it to you and therefore is a nice option. I kindly recommend you to enable it if your hosting provider supports the GZip compression method. (if you hosted with SiteGround you have that option enabled).

After pressing the "Start Backup" button you should be redirected to a page which looks like this:

As stated, the download process should begin shortly.

Please, bear in mind that if your database is big in size, the process will take longer.

Well done! You have successfully created a backup of your message board.

phpBB Backup

How to create a backup of your phpBB forum?

If for some reason you want to archive the current state of your forum that is powered by the phpBB2 message board system, you should first login to your administrative area.

There are a few options how to create your backup:

• Full backup;
• Structure-Only backup;
• Data only backup

All of them will provide you with a valid backup of your website, but depending on what backup exacty you want - you should select a different option.

The most widely used option is the Full backup, as it provides you with the full database backup of the forum, while the other options contains only part of the database.

For example, the "Structure-Only backup" will provide you with the structure of the database (structure of the tables), but will not provide you with the data itself.

In order to backup the database you should login to your administrative area and click "Backup Database" from the menu that is being displayed on the left side of the screen.

Now you should select the backup type that you would like to download on your computer and click the "Start Backup" button.

The form that you should see is something like the one below:

Please note the "Gzip compress file" option, as it would compress the backup file before sending it to you and therefore is a nice option. I kindly recommend you to enable it if your hosting provider supports the GZip compression method. (if you hosted with SiteGround you have that option enabled).

After pressing the "Start Backup" button you should be redirected to a page which looks like this:

As stated, the download process should begin shortly.

Please, bear in mind that if your database is big in size, the process will take longer.

Well done! You have successfully created a backup of your message board.

phpBB Backup

How to create a backup of your phpBB forum?

If for some reason you want to archive the current state of your forum that is powered by the phpBB2 message board system, you should first login to your administrative area.

There are a few options how to create your backup:

• Full backup;
• Structure-Only backup;
• Data only backup

All of them will provide you with a valid backup of your website, but depending on what backup exacty you want - you should select a different option.

The most widely used option is the Full backup, as it provides you with the full database backup of the forum, while the other options contains only part of the database.

For example, the "Structure-Only backup" will provide you with the structure of the database (structure of the tables), but will not provide you with the data itself.

In order to backup the database you should login to your administrative area and click "Backup Database" from the menu that is being displayed on the left side of the screen.

Now you should select the backup type that you would like to download on your computer and click the "Start Backup" button.

The form that you should see is something like the one below:

Please note the "Gzip compress file" option, as it would compress the backup file before sending it to you and therefore is a nice option. I kindly recommend you to enable it if your hosting provider supports the GZip compression method. (if you hosted with SiteGround you have that option enabled).

After pressing the "Start Backup" button you should be redirected to a page which looks like this:

As stated, the download process should begin shortly.

Please, bear in mind that if your database is big in size, the process will take longer.

Well done! You have successfully created a backup of your message board.

phpBB Backup

How to create a backup of your phpBB forum?

If for some reason you want to archive the current state of your forum that is powered by the phpBB2 message board system, you should first login to your administrative area.

There are a few options how to create your backup:

• Full backup;
• Structure-Only backup;
• Data only backup

All of them will provide you with a valid backup of your website, but depending on what backup exacty you want - you should select a different option.

The most widely used option is the Full backup, as it provides you with the full database backup of the forum, while the other options contains only part of the database.

For example, the "Structure-Only backup" will provide you with the structure of the database (structure of the tables), but will not provide you with the data itself.

In order to backup the database you should login to your administrative area and click "Backup Database" from the menu that is being displayed on the left side of the screen.

Now you should select the backup type that you would like to download on your computer and click the "Start Backup" button.

The form that you should see is something like the one below:

Please note the "Gzip compress file" option, as it would compress the backup file before sending it to you and therefore is a nice option. I kindly recommend you to enable it if your hosting provider supports the GZip compression method. (if you hosted with SiteGround you have that option enabled).

After pressing the "Start Backup" button you should be redirected to a page which looks like this:

As stated, the download process should begin shortly.

Please, bear in mind that if your database is big in size, the process will take longer.

Well done! You have successfully created a backup of your message board.