Tutorial

How To Install phpBB® Forums on Ubuntu 12.10

Published on June 6, 2013

Bulat Khamitov

How To Install phpBB® Forums on Ubuntu 12.10

Spin up Ubuntu 12.10 x64 droplet:

Step 1 - Install LAMP stack

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
apt-get -y install apache2 mysql-server mysql-client php5 php5-mysql php5-gd imagemagick

Step 2 - Create A Database

We will create database 'phpBB' and user 'phpBB' with password 'PassWord', make sure to change it to your own value:

mysqladmin create phpBB
mysql -Bse "create user 'phpBB'@'localhost' identified by 'PassWord';"
mysql -Bse "grant all privileges on \`phpBB\`.* to 'phpBB'@'localhost';"
mysqladmin flush-privileges

Step 3 - Install phpBB

You can find latest version of phpBB from their website. We will download latest version and copy it over into Apache's default folder:

wget https://www.phpbb.com/files/release/phpBB-3.0.12.zip
unzip phpBB-3.0.12.zip
rm -rf /var/www/*
cp -R phpBB3/* /var/www/

Set Correct Directory and File Permissions

cd /var/www
for files in config.php cache files store images/avatars/upload/; do chmod 777 $files; done

Step 4 - Finish Installation

Navigate over to http://IP/install (http://198.199.92.189/install/ in our case):

Click on 'Install' tab:

You should have all the required packages already installed:

Enter Database Credentials, replacing PassWord with your own value:

Database type: MySQL with MySQLi Extension
Database server hostname or DSN: localhost
Database name: phpBB
Database username: phpBB
Database password: PassWord

If you set it up correctly, you should see a successful database connection:

In this next step you should setup your admin username and password:

Setup E-mail settings if you have a custom SMTP server, otherwise stick with the default values:

Your installation should now be (almost) complete:

Delete /install Folder

After you are done installing phpBB you should delete /install folder:

rm -rf /var/www/install

Now you should be able to access your phpBB forum at your droplet's IP address:

To access admin interface, click on "Administration Control Panel" at the bottom of the page:

And you are all done!

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About the authors

Bulat Khamitov

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mano ayma • October 27, 2023

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mano ayma • October 27, 2023

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lebroncodex • January 11, 2015

it does not work for me i do everthing corectly without any error but when i go to my ip/install it a blank error page error 102 attempt was refused .

Andrew SB

DigitalOcean Employee

• June 27, 2014

@david: The link in the wget command has been updated to the most recent version now. Though you can always go to phpBB’s website to get the most recent link.

Also, just a heads up… If you’re using Ubuntu 14.04, the Apache Document Root directory changed to /var/www/html/ So the commands to install would now be:

wget https://www.phpbb.com/files/release/phpBB-3.0.12.zip 
unzip phpBB-3.0.12.zip 
rm -rf /var/www/html/* 
cp -R phpBB3/* /var/www/html/ 
cd /var/www/html 
for files in config.php cache files store images/avatars/upload/; do chmod 777 $files; done

david715891 • June 27, 2014

Has anyone actually got this to work? I have tried multiple times, but fail each attempt at the ‘wget’ command in Part 3. I am a) not sure it even downloads the ZIP file, and if I assume it has and keep running the subsequent commands, under Step 4 get an Error 404.

Please let me know if you have had success with this one. It’s driving me troppo!