Installation

Requirements

A webserver (preferably Apache).
PHP 4.3.0 or later (PHP 5 included).
A database where forum data is to be stored: MySQL 4.1.2 or later, PostgreSQL 7.0 or later or SQLite 2 (SQLite 3 is not supported).

Steps to install PunBB 1.3

Download the latest revision of PunBB 1.3.
Copy/upload all contents of the archive into the directory served by your web server (e.g. /home/user/example.com/punbb/).
Open forum index (e.g. http://example.com/forum/index.php in your browser) and follow the instructions.

Migration from PunBB 1.2 to PunBB 1.3

Follow these instructions to migrate from your current PunBB 1.2.* installation to 1.3.

NOTE: Make a backup of your current forum directory before proceeding. 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. If you're using SQLite, just make a backup copy of the SQLite database file. You can also make database backups via most administration tools such as MySQL Administrator, phpMyAdmin and phpPgAdmin. It's strongly recommended to make a database backup if your forum is not 100% in English. You can experience data loss in the convertion to UTF-8 if you specify wrong encoding of data stored in the database.

Download PunBB 1.3 and extract the archive on your hard disk.
Replace your old 1.2 directory with the contents of the 1.3 archive. Keep old config.php and img/avatars dir. E.g. if you have 1.2 installed into www/punbb/ and forum URL is http://example.com/punbb/. You can use the next steps:
- rename old www/punbb/ to www/punbb_old/;
- create new directory www/punbb/ and put PunBB 1.3 there;
- copy /www/punbb_old/config.php to new www/punbb/ and /www/punbb_old/img/avatars to /www/punbb/img/avatars.
Open forum index and follow instructions.

Updating PunBB from 1.3.x to 1.3.(x+1)

How to update an 1.3 forum:

make a backup of the database and files;
turn the Maintenance mode on (via admin panel);
overwrite old files with new ones;
after owerwriting, verify that cache, img/avatars and extensions (for pun_repository) directories have enough write permissions (usually 777);
clear cache directory;
go to the forum index and run db_update.php script (this may take a long time);
turn the Maintenance mode off.