Installation and Upgrade Instructions

Instructions for the installation of PunBB 1.2 and for upgrading from previous versions.


Requirements

MySQL: PunBB will not work at all with any version prior to 3.23.17.

PostgreSQL: PunBB 1.2 has been thoroughly tested on various versions between 7.3.3 and 7.4.5, but it should work fine with any version greater than 7.0. Please note that PHP 4.3.0 or later is required for PostgreSQL support.

SQLite: PunBB 1.2 has only been thoroughly tested on versions 2.8.11 and 2.8.14 of SQLite, but should work with basically any version.

Installation

  1. Copy/upload all contents of the directory upload/ into the directory where you want to run your forums.
  2. Run install.php from the forum root directory (e.g. open http://mydomain/myforums/install.php in your browser). Follow the instructions.

Please report any problems you might encounter during installation in the PunBB.org Support Forums.

Upgrading from 1.0

In order to upgrade from PunBB 1.0.* to 1.2, you must first update your current installation to 1.1. Download PunBB 1.1 from the PunBB.org downloads page and follow the upgrade instructions in the included install.html.

Upgrading from 1.1

Follow these instructions to update your current 1.1.* installation to 1.2. PunBB 1.2 has completely new markup and CSS and a new format for language packs. What this means is that your current styles and language packs will have to be updated in order to work with PunBB 1.2. See the PunBB.org website for updated language packs.

NOTE: Make a backup of your current 1.1 directory before proceeding. If you've made changes to the templates in include/template/, you will have to re-apply them manually to the new templates. Also, don't forget to make a backup of your forum database. Use the tool mysqldump for MySQL and pg_dump if you are using PostgreSQL. You can also make database backups via most administration tools such as MySQL Administrator, phpMyAdmin and phpPgAdmin.

  1. Make sure your forums are NOT in maintenance mode (check admin/options). If they are and you continue with the update, you will have to manually disable maintenance mode after the update is complete. See the FAQ for information on how to do this.
  2. Delete all files and folders except the file config.php and the folder img/ in your old 1.1 directory.
  3. Copy/upload all contents of the directory upload/ into your old 1.1 directory (overwriting any existing files).
  4. Copy/upload the script 11_to_12_update.php from the directory extras/ to the forum root directory and run it through your browser. Follow the instructions. Once the update script has finished you should remove the script from the forum root directory.
  5. Open config.php in a text editor and add
    $cookie_seed = 'secret key';
    somewhere between <?php and ?>. Replace secret key with a passphrase of your choice. You do not have to remember this passphrase or use it to log in. It is only used to encrypt passwords stored in cookies. While you are editing config.php, you can safely remove the line starting with $language as PunBB no longer has any use for it.
  6. Make sure PHP has write access to the cache/ directory. On a Windows server your probably won't have to bother, but in Linux/*BSD/UNIX you will most likely have to chmod the directory (if in doubt, chmod to 777).
  7. If needed, log in and place your forums in maintenance mode while you update the user group and forum permissions to suit your needs. PunBB 1.2 does not have the forum attributes "closed" and "administrators/moderators only" so you will have to update any forums to which you want to apply such privileges.

You should now be running PunBB 1.2.

Maximizing Performance

Here are some recommendations for maximizing the performance of PunBB.