{"id":228,"date":"2012-09-16T03:54:44","date_gmt":"2012-09-16T03:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/?p=228"},"modified":"2023-04-09T05:06:46","modified_gmt":"2023-04-09T12:06:46","slug":"how-to-set-up-a-blog-and-forum-install-phpbb-forum-software-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/blog\/228\/how-to-set-up-a-blog-and-forum-install-phpbb-forum-software-3\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Set Up A Blog And Forum \u2013 Install PHPBB Forum Software"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a list of articles in this series, go here: How To Set Up A Blog and Forum Article Index<\/a><\/p>\n

Welcome to part 12 of How To Set Up A WordPress Blog And Forum.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today we will be installing one of the more popular forum software called PHPBB.<\/p>\n

If you have\u00a0HostGator<\/a> for your host, then you can go back to the Fantastico screen and scroll down until you find PHPBBS in the menu on the left.<\/p>\n

\n

\"install1\"<\/p>\n

install1<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As you can see below, it\u2019s under \u2018Discussion Boards\u2019. The screens are the same ones as when you installed WordPress, so I won\u2019t repeat myself. I will however give you the screenshots and you will notice that I made a slight blunder.<\/p>\n

\n

\"install3\"<\/p>\n

install3<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"install4\"<\/p>\n

install4<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"install5\"<\/p>\n

install5<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"install6\"<\/p>\n

install6<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"install7\"<\/p>\n

install7<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As you saw, the installation had a fit. You cannot have two of the scripts installed into the same directory. I tried to install the forum script in my main directory, but I had already installed WordPress there.<\/p>\n

No big deal, I just told it to install it into a sub-directory called phpbb_forum.<\/p>\n

Had I thought this through a little more I probably would have simply named the directory \u2018forum\u2019. To make it easier on people. However, since most of them will be coming to the main site and then going into the forum from there, it won\u2019t really matter much.<\/p>\n

Anyway, here\u2019s our brand spanking new forum:<\/p>\n

\n

\"install8\"<\/p>\n

install8<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I wish I had more room for bigger pictures. So log in and get to this screen:<\/p>\n

\n

\"setup1\"<\/p>\n

setup1<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As usual, they were not very creative with their category and forum names, but it does make it very self explanatory.<\/p>\n

I will confess here and now that I went round and round trying to find the administrator\u2019s area. It\u2019s not very obvious to the average person. Go all the way to the bottom of the screen and you will find the following phrase \u2018Administration Control Panel\u2019. Click on it.<\/p>\n

\n

\"setup2\"<\/p>\n

setup2<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It makes you log in again for security\u2019s sake:<\/p>\n

\n

\"setup3\"<\/p>\n

setup3<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

And you are taken to the general tab of the administrator\u2019s area. It has statistics and some other stuff that I\u2019m not going to go over. Take your time, look it over, change what you can and want to. We are going to go set up some forums:<\/p>\n

\n

\"setup4\"<\/p>\n

setup4<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

After you\u2019ve clicked on the \u2018Forums\u2019 tab you get a screen like this:<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums1\"<\/p>\n

forums1<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Now, calling your first category \u2018Your First Category\u2019 isn\u2019t very original but it does let you know that it has one for you. Rather than deleting it, I simply rename it to \u2018General\u2019.<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums2\"<\/p>\n

forums2<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As you saw, there\u2019s a spot to enter a description and you can password protect individual forums. This is handy if you have a member\u2019s only area and a public area.<\/p>\n

Another use would be if you have a paid membership plan. You could leave some categories open, like general, and have password protected areas for members, like \u2018resources\u2019 for example, where only members find out what super secret resources you use\/have\/recommend.<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums3\"<\/p>\n

forums3<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The rest of the screen allows you to set permissions, display active topics etc. Set to your hearts content. Click on submit and you get:<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums4\"<\/p>\n

forums4<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you go back to the main screen you see the change was effective:<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums5\"<\/p>\n

forums5<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

PHPBB calls categories as forums and sub-forums as forums. No, I don\u2019t know why. Anyway, we are going to create a sub-forum under \u2018General\u2019, so click on \u2018Create New Forum\u2019<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums6\"<\/p>\n

forums6<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I went with a forum staple, \u2018Forum Rules\u2019. The important think is to make sure you have set the parent forum. You cannot post under categories, only under the sub-forums.<\/p>\n

Now, to make things more interesting, you see that very top drop down menu\u2026the one that says \u2018Forums\u2019? It has three choices, \u2018Forums\u2019, \u2018Categories\u2019, and \u2018Links\u2019.<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums7\"<\/p>\n

forums7<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A few more options farther down the screen. For the record, I left them at the defaults, but you don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums8\"<\/p>\n

forums8<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"forums9\"<\/p>\n

forums9<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Here I\u2019m creating a category called \u2018Invertebrates\u2019. This time I\u2019m going to put \u2018corals\u2019 under it and leave hard and soft corals together.<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums10\"<\/p>\n

forums10<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you notice below, the very colorful icons allow you to do a few things. The green gears takes you to the edit screen and the blue arrows allow you to rearrange the order your categories are in. Try the circular arrows on your own but the red \u2018x\u2019 is delete.<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums11\"<\/p>\n

forums11<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Here\u2019s me creating the \u2018Coral\u2019 forum:<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums12\"<\/p>\n

forums12<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

You may have noticed \u2018permissions\u2019 or \u2018rules\u2019. Basically you can restrict the rights that either users or groups can have.<\/p>\n

\n

\"forums13\"<\/p>\n

forums13<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I have all the screen shots for the next post already, but there were so many that I decided to make this into two posts (two for the price of one). This is a good stopping point anyway.<\/p>\n

Go forth, be fruitful and multiply your categories and forums, play with permissions and rules. I have another post to write so we can wrap this up.<\/p>\n

– Jeffery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a list of articles in this series, go here: How To Set Up A Blog and Forum Article Index Welcome to part 12 of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,7,11],"tags":[21,40,42,47,62,66,112,115,130,141,155,157,159,162,164,166,212,213,228,229,230,232,233,316,317,318,354,355,370,373,384,386,401,437],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-tips","category-general","category-starting-a-blog","category-wordpress-how-to","tag-administration-control-panel","tag-article-index","tag-article-series","tag-average-person","tag-blog-software","tag-blunder","tag-directory","tag-discussion-boards","tag-editors","tag-fantastico","tag-forum","tag-forum-article","tag-forum-names","tag-forum-script","tag-forum-software","tag-forums","tag-how-to-set-up-a-blog","tag-how-to-set-up-a-blog-and-forum","tag-install-widgets","tag-install-wordpress","tag-install1","tag-installing-plugins","tag-installing-wordpress","tag-phpbb","tag-phpbb-forum-software","tag-phrase","tag-screens","tag-scripts","tag-setting-up-wordpress","tag-setup-wordpress","tag-software-editors","tag-spanking-forum","tag-sweaty-shop","tag-wordpress-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":54,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3113,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions\/3113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwoodonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}