Create your own free forum.

[Gigacore]

Introduction:
This tutorial lets you to create your own free forum in 45 minutes. This includes how to setup free bulletin board software in your web hosting server and configure it.

Web Hosting?
If you own a domain, that’s well and good. But make sure your hosting supports PHP. In case if u don’t have domain, you can purchase it for as low as 800 Rs / Year from different Web Hosting services.

Free Web Hosting:
If you are not ready or to wish to buy a domain and still want to create and run your own free forum, there are so many free web hosting services available in the internet. If you still want to go for a free web hosting service, I recommended www.x10hosting.com

x10hosting offers free web hosting service with cPanel and PHP support.

It has two different plans, Ad Enhanced and Ad Free.

Ad Enhanced gives you disk space up to 2.5 GB but you need to display their ads in your site/forum with 293 x 85 px banner.

So I Recommended you to go for “Ad Free” account which offers 300 MB of disk space with 10 GB / Month Bandwidth. This is more than enough to begin a new forum. Though you have a very little disk space, you can allocate attachment sizes and if possible you can encourage your members to upload files to public file hosting services and give the link back in the forum.

Step-by-Step Procedure to sign-up “Ad Free” Account:

1. Open x10hosting homepage and click on “Apply Now” under “Ad Free”
2. If you get a few pages with T.O.S, Keep Clicking on “Continue” button and agree all the T.O.S
3. Then finally you will end up with “x10Hosting Service Sign-up” Page
4. In “Step 1”, click on “Ad Free Plan”.
5. Now select your desired domain. For example, yourname.x10hosting.com. Click on confirm domain to see whether if the domain is available or not. If the domain is available, you will get this message “The domain you’ve chosen is currently available!”
6. Click on “Continue Process”, “Step 2” will get highlighted.
7. In “Step 2”, enter your “Account Details” & “Personal Details”. Click on “Continue Process”
8. In “Step 3”, agree the “TOS” and you will need to create an x10Hosting forum account before continuing. You can click on “Click here to register a forum account now.” to register a forum account.
9. Then if everything is correct, you will get this message, “Hosting account signup confirmation e-mail sent. Please check your e-mail for further instructions.”
10. You will then receive a confirmation message. Confirm it. Then if it requires you to wait for few minutes or if you are unlucky, few hours!
11. After the activation process is complete, you will receive an email which says, “x10Hosting - Ad-Free Hosting Account Created!” and it contains your account detail and the link to your cPanel.

Now you have completed the hosting part successfully. And now its time to install the “Bulletin Board Software”

Bulletin Board Software:
There are so many free Bulletin Board Software available, such as phpBB and myBB etc.

This tutorial teaches you to install ”myBB” software. myBB is a free Bulletin Board software with decent features and has some good help and support, loads of Mods and Skins are available to configure your forum and its easy too.

myBB Homepage: http://www.mybboard.net/
myBB Features: http://www.mybboard.net/features

Now you have to download and extract the latest version of myBB software to a folder.

Download: http://www.mybboard.net/downloads
Version: MyBB 1.2.10:
Size: 1.1 MB

After the download is complete, extract the file using a WinZip or WinRAR.

Now in order to install myBB to your server, you need good FTP Client Software.

FTP Client:

I recommend you download and install “FileZilla”, which is free and easy to use.

Download the latest version of “FileZilla” Client from here: http://filezilla-project.org/

Remember: Download the “FileZilla Client”

FileZilla Client Layout ScreenShot:



Step-by-Step Procedure to install “My BB” using “FileZilla” Client:

1. Open “File Client”
2. Now enter your x10Hosting domain address in “Host” textbox.
For example: yourname.x10
3. Enter your x10Hosting username in “Username” textbox.
4. And finally your password.
5. Don’t enter the port address, just click “Quick Connect”
6. Now you must be logged in to your x10Hosting server. And you can see a message “Directory listing successful” at the end.
7. Now you need to upload a folder called “Upload” from your extracted “myBB folder”
8. Open the “public_html” folder of your server from “Remote Site” explorer and delete a file called “Index.html” which will be created by x10Hosting. And keep the “public_html” opened. And Create a new directory called “forum” and open the folder.
9. Under “Local Site” Directory explorer, navigate to the myBB folder that u have extracted. And open the folder called “Upload” and select all the file in it and “Right Click” and click on “Upload Menu” menu item.



10. Now the uploading of files will begin and will take few minutes depending on your internet connection speed. Sit back and relax but don’t get away from your desktop, because it prompts for few overwriting in the middle. And stop all your browsing activity for a moment.
11. Then when the file transfer completes, you will get a message as “File Transfer Successful”

Now the Uploading part is complete and now you have to CHMOD the file.

CHMOD:
CHMODing is done to assign certain permissions to files and folders in your server. Like: Read, Write and Execute in numbers.

CHMODing Files:
You can easily CHMOD the files from your “FileZilla Client”.

List of files you need to CHMOD in your server:

filename - CHMOD Permission
——————————————–
inc/config.php - 666
inc/settings.php - 666
uploads/ - 777
uploads/avatars/ - 777
inc/languages/english/ - 777
admin/backups/ - 777

To CHMOD a file or a folder:
Navigate to the above items in your “forum” folder in FileZilla Client’s Remote Site Explorer, right click on each item and click on “File Attribution” and change the CHMOD permission number.

For example, here I CHMODed inc/config.php





Follow the same procedure CHMOD to all the other files and folders.

After you complete CHMODing files and folders, follow these steps to install myBB on your server:

Step-by-Step Procedure to install myBB in your server:

1. In your browser, visit the URL where you installed your forums, appending /install/ on to the end of it.
For example: yourname.x10hosting.com/forum/install/



2. Now you can see the “myBB Installation Screen”



3. Follow the steps and when you come to “Requirements Check” make sure everything is “Writable”. This means you have successfully CHMODed the files. Now click next.



4. In “Database Configuration”, you have to enter the database information. Now you have to create a “Database” in your server.

5. Open a new tab and Login to your cPanel. (For x10Hosting, you will receive the cPanel address in the mail.)

6. Under “Databases” in your cPanel, open “MySQL Databases”



7. Enter a Database name and click on “Create Database”



8. Go back, now you can see the database name.



9. Come back to “My BB Installation” tab. In “Database Username and Database Password” you have to enter the username and password of your host. And Enter Database Name (In my case the database name is “bloghell_BlogHell” as you see above). Leave the remaining as it is.



10. Then Click on Next.

11. Now the table creation takes place. And will finally receive this message, “All tables have been created, click Next to populate them.”

12. From now, read the messages and keep clicking next. Until you get “Board Configuration” page.

13. In “Board Configuration” page, enter all the Board Name and Website Name and its URLs

Cookie Settings:
Cookie Domain: This is the domain or subdomain that contains your forum. Usually a period/dot (”.”) is placed in front of this domain/subdomain in order to include all of its subdomains
Cookie Path: This is the path from the root of your domain to your forum directory. The starting slash and ending slash should be included.

Examples:
1. If you forum URL is: http://www.myforum.com/ then your cookie domain must be: .myforum.com and the cookie path must be /

2. If your forum URL is: http://www.mysite.com/forum/ then your cookie domain must be .mysite.com and the cookie path must be /forum/

3. If your forum URL is: http://yourforum.yoursite.com/forum/ then your cookie domain must be .yourforum.yoursite.com and the cookie path must be /forum/
If you are on x10Hosting, then you should follow the third example.

In my case, the Cookie Domain is .bloghell.x10hosting.com and the Cookie Path is /forum/



After you enter all the details, click next and create the admin ID and click next to complete the setup. Then you will get the finish setup screen and you have completed the installation successfully. Now you can open your new forum and login to your admin account!

When you follow this tutorial, your forum URL will be:

http://yourname.x10hosting.com/forum

But when you visit, http://yourname.x10hosting.com, you get a directory listing because you had deleted the index.html at the beginning. So u can create your own webpage and name it as index.html using any html editors and upload it to the public_html folder using your FTP Client. Or if not you can just login to your cPanel and setup a redirect.

Via: My Blog

Thanks for reading my tutorial. If you find this useful, digg this tutorial.

Download PDF Version of this tutorial.

Warning: After creating your own forums, you are not allowed to spam here.

[utsav]

good tut.its great for noobs out here who wanna know abt hosting in detail becoz there r many things to be known to start forum

[victor_rambo]

Are you sure that x10hosting allows all functions of PHP. I never got any CMS or foum to run on their site. I had installed them using Fantastico Deluxe.

[Gigacore]

Originally Posted by rohan_shenoy

Are you sure that x10hosting allows all functions of PHP. I never got any CMS or foum to run on their site. I had installed them using Fantastico Deluxe.

yeah.. see this

http://gigasmilies.x10hosting.com/forum/

[Choto Cheeta]

great effort on writting all stuff down

[hahahari]

If you are serious and also have a good plan for the forums [any other sites]..........PM me I will hook you up with a ORIGINAL domain name and hosting [All ads by me.........Non intrusive ads] [All other control will be yours.I will not interfear in your INSITE matters]

I hope I dont get bombed by PM

**I aint kidding

PS-I have a myspace related domain name which I would love to get developed
also some other domains which I would love to have developed

SO PM ME IF YOU ARE SERIOUS

mods I ope the above post is not wrong

[anandk]

Awesome tut ! As usual !

[Cool G5]

Great guide.
This should be made sticky.

[Gigacore]

Thanks guys...

if anyone is interested in buying own domain, can contact ravi_9793

[ravi_9793]

great tut buddy..really appreciable

[adi007]

great work giga..
this should be made sticky..

[Gigacore]

thanks... mods have to decide that

[Pathik]

Forum-making for Dummies..

[Gigacore]

Originally Posted by pathiks

Forum-making for Dummies..

Lol... call it for n00bs

[satyamy]

Nice tut

[swapcool]

Thanks for the tutorial.

[MetalheadGautham]

if it was not locked, this post could have won GOTW...

I feel the ad enhanced option looks really good, if the ads are family friendly, unlike some others...

[nvidia]

Thanks for the tut Gigacore

[phreak0ut]

W00t! AWESOME TUTORIAL DUDE!

[azzu]

really nice and Helpfull

[abhi.eternal]

thanks... may be this tut will come handy in future!

[Gigacore]

its good to see this tut is useful

[Garbage]

This tutorial shld be in Next issue of Digit Mag...

Isn't it guyz ??

gr8 work Giga Keep it up !!

[victor_rambo]

^They should also include a MyBB package and a XAMMP pachage so that once can try out various stuff on their PC itself. I follow that practice. I can experience all stuff on my PC itself without having to connect to the internet and upload numerous files.

[Garbage]

Originally Posted by rohan_shenoy

^They should also include a MyBB package and a XAMMP pachage so that once can try out various stuff on their PC itself. I follow that practice. I can experience all stuff on my PC itself without having to connect to the internet and upload numerous files.

yeh.. we Dial-up users have to follow this..

[Gigacore]

Its just around 2.5 MB.. so it shouldn't take more than 30 Minutes on dial-up

[Garbage]

Originally Posted by Gigacore

Its just around 2.5 MB.. so it shouldn't take more than 30 Minutes on dial-up

It's not about Downloading the software, but also for Uploading and configuring server too !!

[Gigacore]

Originally Posted by Garbage

It's not about Downloading the software, but also for Uploading and configuring server too !!

Well uploading may be the difficult part, but to configure u dont need a broadband..

for ur information, my connection is CDMA 1x (144+ Kbps)

[fun2sh]

great work dude!!
thanks for tut!! wil cum handy someday

[Garbage]

Originally Posted by Gigacore

Well uploading may be the difficult part, but to configure u dont need a broadband..

for ur information, my connection is CDMA 1x (144+ Kbps)

And I'm on 56Kbps Dial-up
It was Broadband year 2007. Ended without BroadBand...