| |
| 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.
- 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 |
+-----------+
- 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. | |
| |
|
