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
- Copy/upload all contents of the directory upload/ into the
directory where you want to run your forums.
- 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.
- 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.
- Delete all files and folders except the file config.php and
the folder img/ in your old 1.1 directory.
- Copy/upload all contents of the directory upload/ into your
old 1.1 directory (overwriting any existing files).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- Run it in a UNIX-like operating system!
- Use the Apache webserver and compile PHP as a static module
for Apache.
- Use a PHP cache/accelerator tool such as Turck MMCache or
Alternative PHP
Cache.
- Make sure that PHP has zlib support so you can enable gzip
output compression in Admin/Options. This greatly reduces the
size of the XHTML output at the cost of a little CPU time. An
alternative is to use the Apache modules mod_gzip or
mod_deflate. The two methods yield similar results.
- Visit the administration interface and disable any forum
features that are not used or you feel are unnecessary.