phpBB is a popular forum software that allows you to create and manage online communities for discussion and collaboration. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps to install phpBB on an Ubuntu Server latest release.
Before we proceed with the installation, make sure your Ubuntu server is up-to-date and has the necessary software installed. Connect to your server via SSH and run the following commands:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install apache2 php7.2 libapache2-mod-php7.2 php7.2-mysql mysql-server unzip
You can download the latest version of phpBB directly from the official website using the following command:
wget https://download.phpbb.com/pub/release/3.3/3.3.3/phpBB-3.3.3.zip
Once the download is complete, you can extract the files by running the following command:
unzip phpBB-3.3.3.zip -d phpBB
Please note that the version number (3.3.3) may change over time. Make sure to download the latest version from the official website.
phpBB requires a MySQL or MariaDB database to store its data. You can create a new database and user with the following commands:
mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE phpbb;
CREATE USER 'phpbbuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON phpbb.* TO 'phpbbuser'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit
Make sure to replace "password" with a secure password of your choice.
Move the extracted phpBB files to your web directory by running the following command:
sudo mv phpBB /var/www/html/
Change the ownership of the phpBB files to the webserver user by running the following command:
sudo chown -R www-data: /var/www/html/phpBB/
To start the installation process, open your web browser and navigate to http://your-server-ip/phpBB/. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation. You will need to enter your database details (database name, username, and password) during the installation process.
Once the installation is complete, remove the "install" directory to prevent unauthorized access to the installation scripts:
sudo rm -rf /var/www/html/phpBB/install/
To secure your phpBB installation, you can use HTTPS instead of HTTP. You can obtain a free SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt by following the instructions in this tutorial.
You can also configure your firewall to allow only necessary traffic to your webserver. You can follow our Ubuntu Firewall Guide to get started.
In this tutorial, we demonstrated how to install phpBB on an Ubuntu Server latest. We also created a MySQL database and user, moved phpBB files to the web directory, and secured the installation. Now you can start setting up your online community on phpBB.
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