Logo
Fud Forum Contact  
Navigation
Home

Downloads

User Guide

Support forum

Demo forum

Services



  
Use guide
License This product is protected under the GNU General Public License (GPL). For full details on this license and the rights it grants to you, the user of this software, and to us, the developers, please see the file COPYING that is distributed with this software. Also, for more information on the GPL and the Free Software Foundation visit http://www.fsf.org or http://www.gnu.org

FUDforum Installation
FUDforum is very CPU efficient forum and doesn't require powerful hardware to run.

Some of the more advanced features like spell checking and full text search can require quite a bit of CPU power to run. If you have high forum traffic and are beggining to lack CPU power you might want to disable these two features.

FUDforum requires PHP 4.0.3+ and MySQL (3.23.45 is severally recommended, lower versions have rather nasty bugs that prevent proper resolving of join indexes, in addition if you are running on linux pay careful attention to the pthread semaphore over spin problem if you are compiling MySQL yourself, the easy way out is to get the latest binary from MySQL (http://www.mysql.com)

First you should test if your web server and database server are compatible
To test your PHP setup is pretty simple, create a file called test.php in your web browseable directory into which put the following contents:
<?PHP
phpinfo();
?>
If your PHP is installed correctly this will provide a full page of diagnostic information. If you do not get the diagnostic information such as this sample http://fud.prohost.org/test.php your php is misconfigured and is not working. If you are running your own web server consider installing php (resources at http://www.php.net), if you are using a hosting provider ask them to install php, or consider switching to provider that does offer php.

**WARNING: SHAMELESS PLUG***
The company I work for http://www.prohost.org provides hosting with all the services that are required to run the forum already setup.

We also provide mass forum hosting. If you want your forum to be always up to date and run fast we provide complete forum hosting solutions. For more info go to the support forum.
***WARNING END***

Once you get the phpinfo page things to look for are:
  • MySQL support
    is required for FUDforum to work. If your php doesn't have MySQL support make sure to enable it, or as your server admin to do so.
  • pspell support
    is not required for FUDforum to run, but if you intend to use the built in spell checker pspell support must be enabled.

MySQL Setup
MySQL is the database back end of FUDforum a proper MySQL setup is very critical to fast performance of the forum. If you do not have MySQL installed get it from http://www.mysql.com. MySQL is free software released under the GPL licence.

First check your version of MySQL, this can be accomplished in a number of ways, I'll show two.
  1. Using the MySQL command line client connect to MySQL
    $ MySQL -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD
    
    
    you should should get a prompt like
    mysql>
    
    type:
    select VERSION();
    
    at the prompt and press enter. You should get a version number that looks something like
    mysql> select VERSION();
    +-----------+
    | VERSION() |
    +-----------+
    | 3.23.47   |
    +-----------+
    
  2. Checking with php
    Second way to check involves using php, again it's quite simple. Just make a version.php file in your web browseable directory and put the following text into it:
    <?php
    mysql_connect("YOUR_SERVER_ADDRESS", "USER_ID", "PASSWORD");
    $r=mysql_query("select VERSION()");
    list($v) = mysql_fetch_row($r);
    echo $v."<br>";
    ?>
    
    replace the YOUR_SERVER_ADDRESS with the address of your mysql server (most probably localhost)
    replace the USER_ID with your mysql user id
    replace the PASSWORD with your mysql user password
If your version is lower then 3.23.45 I suggest that you upgrade mysql as the older releases have some performance crippling bugs such as inability to properly resolve indexes in joins.

Installing FUDforum
First get the forum tarball from the download section. To decompress a tar.gz file type the following command.
$ gzip -dc forum-vX.X.X.tar.gz | tar xv
If you downloaded the tar.bz2 to decompress it type
$ bzip2 -dc forum-vX.X.X.tar.bz2 | tar xv
Decompressing the tarball should have produced a forum_install directory. This directory contains all the forum files, and 2 installation scripts.
There are two ways to install the forum, you should choose the one most convenient for you.

Shell Installation
If you have shell access you might choose to install the forum via the shell, for this you simply have to run the provided install script. The script will ask you a series of questions and then install the forum.

Web Installation
If you lack shell access or prefer to work with your web browser we have also provided a web installation script. If you lack shell access you will have to decompress the forum tarball on your computer (WinZip in windows can tackle .tar.gz files). After decompressing the file locally it should produce a forum_install directory. Using FTP upload this directory to your web server. To use the web installation script simply copy the install.php file into your web browseable directory and access it with your web browser. For example if your web browseable directory is fud.prohost.org then to access the installation script you must point your web browser to http://fud.prohost.org/install.php
Follow the instructions carefully and after you have finished DO NOT forget to delete the install.php from your web browseable directory otherwise anyone will be able to reconfigure your forum.

If you experience problems during install you can get help in our support forums, or contact us via email.

Setting Up FUDforum
To be able to configure the forum you must be logged in as the administrator, for that you require the administrator username and password, if you finished the installation you should have both. Go to the login page and enter the administrator account username and password to login. Whenever you're logged in as the administrator you have an "Admin CP" button at top of the page, click this button to access the administrator control panel.

FUDforum arranges forums in categories, for example a forum which is called "Latest Events" might be in the news category along with the "Interesting Happenings".
So, to create a forum you must first create a category. Click the "Category/Forum Management" link. This will bring up the category control panel where you can create and edit categories and the forums within them.
Create a category.
Once created the category will be showed at the bottom of the page in a green colored category list.
Click the <Edit Forums> link, which will bring up the forum editor.
Create a forum, be careful while choosing various options all of these have major effects on who will be able to view the forum and post in it.

Assigning moderators
The moderator management system is pretty simple, in the administrator control panel click "Moderator/User Manager". This will bring up a user search field. Enter the name of the user you want to make the moderator and click search. If this user actually does exist you will get information about him including the forums he is moderating. Click the "Modify Moderation Permissions" link which will bring up a list of the forums, check off the forums you want this user to be able to moderate and click Apply.

Making first post
Go to the front page of the forum, select the forum that you have created which will take you to the thread view, there will probably be no threads for you to see, so it's up to you to make one and make sure that you have installed the forum correctly and can indeed post.
Click the New Thread button near the top of the page, this will take you to the post form. Fill in the title and the Body fields and click Create Thread. You will be taken back to the thread view of the forum, but now you will see your post in the list.


  

Free Fud hosting

DK3.com
CoolFreePages.com
Gametribe.net
L33t.ca
 
Hosted By
Fud Forum is hosted by Prohost.org


 
Copyright © 2001-2002 Advanced Internet Designs Inc.