How To Install SMF - Installing Simple Machines Forum

This guide will show you how to install an SMF forum in the event that you do not have Fantastico or cannot, for some reason, install SMF from it.

Step 1:

The first step is to make sure you have access to a MySQL database and enough rights for it (I don't know exactly what you need but if you have full access rights you will obviously be okay.) To create a MySQL database on your host through cPanel (comes with all Astahost accounts) login to cPanel by going to yoursite.com/cpanel or yoursite.astahost.com/cpanel and entering your username and password. Under site management, click on the MySQL Databases icon. In the new window (or tab) fill in a name for your database (maybe the name of your forum). Note any information about the name of your database (in Astahost cPanel there is a notice telling you that your username followed by an underscore is added to the front of your database' name). Logout of cPanel.

Step 2:

Download SMF from simplemachines.org. Then upload the files to your webspace. This can be done through an FTP client or through cPanel's File Manager (I would recommend cPanel because it is easier to extract the file and saves you uploading the extracted version if you do not know how to extract it with an FTP client.) To do it through cPanel, login and open File Manager under Site Management. Navigate to the parent directory of the place you want your forum to appear (often public_html) and create a folder with whatever name you want (this will contain the forum and people viewing the forum will need to navigate to this folder). Navigate into this new folder. Then upload the SMF install zipped file. Next, extract the contents by clicking on the install file's name and clicking on extract contents on the right hand side of the File Manager window.

Step 3:

Navigate to the following address in your browser: blahblahblah.com/forum where blahblahblah.com is the address of your main website and forum is the name of the folder you created earlier. However: if you did not create the folder in public_html, you will have to work out where to navigate to yourself. An installation page should be on-screen. Fill in all the details, and proceed through the pages, remembering that your MySQL database name may have your username followed by an understroke or some other prefix before the bit of the name that you specified.

You have now installed SMF. Congratulations! You can now access your forum by navigating to the folder where you extracted all of the files. Don't forget to check that the file install.php has been deleted, as it is a major security risk to leave it how and where it was.

Happy foruming!

 

 

 

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By the way, if you use Fantastico to install it, it will probably be an older version, and you will need to update. This is easily done through the Package Manager in your forum's Admin Panel.

 

 

 

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Thank you for this!! This is so helpful for newbies like me .

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Plus, Fantastico is currently offline anyways.

xboxrulz

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nice tutorial : ) i am gooing to install smf on my new astahost web : )

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Shouldn't this topic be in the tutorial forum ? I don't think it is alright to put it here.
By the way, back to the topic, It is a pretty nice tutorial (It is better than the document at www.simplemachines.org , the first time I read it, I couldn't understand anything since at that time, I was completely new to these things )


Installing through Fantastico is not recommended, it may not contain minor (or even major)bug fixes and sometime there is a problem with the version it has.

Thank you very much for sharing

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Thank you so much!
How To Install SMF

Thanks so much for this!

I only had version 1.1.7 available on fantastico and wanted the most up to date with the security fixes.

Managed to install in 5 minutes and I am a newbie!!

Thanks again!

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good post helpful for the creation of the forums

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Nice little tutorial. Perfect for beginners. There must some web-installers with Cpanel that can help in updating auto-installation. I didn't find it updating with computinghosts's offered Cpanel. It just allows single installation or new installation. I'll be looking for alternative for fantastico in this case.

In between, i have found official script from simplemachines website which allows you to update SMF installation. This script is called Web-install. Which allows you to upgrade your current SMF installation. After installation you've to delete the script file. Good option when your fantastico is not upgrading SMF installation.

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Web Install is great, even for people who don't know the ins and outs of MySQL and databases. It took me some time to learn how to install without Fantastico, but in reality, it isn't much harder. Softalicious (I believe that is what it's called) usually keeps the scripts more up to date than Fantastico does, but it still takes time to update them.

Also the auto install scripts don't have the Release Candidates and Beta versions of SMF, which many people choose to use on live sites.

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