PunBB 1.3 Frequently Asked Questions

If you don't find the answer to your question here (or it doesn't work for you) and PunBB Forums search results nothing, then you should create new topic in PunBB 1.3 troubleshooting forum.

• 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).

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

See also: Steps to getting PunBB 1.3 to work on SourceForge.net.

1. Download an extension archive from the PunBB extensions repository or other place. Extract it into your forum’s extensions directory. E.g. your forum root is /home/user/example.com/punbb/ and you download pun_bbcode extension. To install the extension the file /home/user/example.com/punbb/extensions/pun_bbcode/manifest.xml should exist.
2. Log into the forum and go to Administration ⇒ Extensions (http://example.com/punbb/admin/extensions.php?section=install). The downloaded extension should be listed there.
3. Click the Install extension and follow instructions.

To be done.

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

1. Download PunBB 1.3 and extract the archive on your hard disk.
2. 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 may use the next steps:
   1. Rename old www/punbb/ to www/punbb_old/
   2. Create new directory www/punbb/ and put PunBB 1.3 there.
   3. Copy /www/punbb_old/config.php to new www/punbb/ and /www/punbb_old/img/avatars to /www/punbb/img/avatars.
3. Open forum index and follow instructions.

What should be said right here?

See PunBB 1.3 integration for details.

PunBB 1.3 natively supports URL rewriting, including SEF URLs.

1. Rename file .htaccess.dist in the root of your forum to .htaccess.
2. Go to Administration ⇒ Settings (/admin/settings.php?section=setup), find URL Scheme section there.
3. Choose the URL scheme you like and save changes.

There is the $forum_db variable to make all SQL-queries. There are several ways to make an SQL-query:

• Direct query. You can write an SQL-statement and query it. Code example:

   $result = $forum_db->query('SELECT * FROM topics WHERE id = 10');

• Query builder. It's a special method of db class that allows to make a query. Its advantages: we can make a query with different parameters (adding db-prefix for tables, for example), queries are more understandable, you needn't take care of cross-db of your queries. Code example:

  $query = array(
     'SELECT'  => '*',
     'FROM'    => 'topics',
     'WHERE'   => 'id = 10'
  );
  $result = $forum_db->query_build($query);

  This query will automatic add table-prefix for table “topics”, if you want to make query without db-prefix sql-query will:

  $query = array(
     'SELECT'  => '*',
     'FROM'    => 'topics',
     'WHERE'   => 'id = 10',
     'PARAMS' => array('NO_PREFIX' => true)
  );