Vbulletin Usage - HELP ME!

[Foxie3a]

I've been thinking about getting a site together. And One of the parts on it that I want is a forum.

Immiedately Vbulletin comes to mind. But I have NO idea about anything when it comes to web design, except for playing with DreamWeaver MX a couple of times.

So can you guys tell me if I can legally use it...my obligations..and how to do it. And where I can get it.

Thanks.

[CrashOveride]

vb you mean?
http://www.vbulletin.org/
http://www.vbulletin.com/
Don't know much about it but I know you have to pay... I think phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/) MIGHT be free but I can't remember, I don;t like it as much as VB but its ok... the xbitlabs.com forums (cummunity button on their front page) is phpBB.

[Foxie3a]

how do I set things up like this?

[deRusett]

PHPBB is free yes.

IF you are completly new to it I would suggest using Postnuke

www.postnuke.com
with the pnPHPBB2 Module
www.pnphpbb.com

you will have a fully funtional site, with forum in about 30 minutes of set up.

each comes with excelent documentation how to set it up, I start most of my sites off with this combo now, then mod to my hearts content,

Much easier then learning CSS style sheets :D

[Foxie3a]

I am willing to learn. I just downloaded PHPBB. I think that I will use that.

EDIT:

Looking at it now..There is no config file or anything..

how do I set it all up and such? I have dreamweaver if it can help.

[deRusett]

dreamweaver can't help, and I find it to actually be a hinder when using PHP, it is an HTML editor.


I don't exactly recall PHPBB but I am pretty sure there should be documentation installed,

you do have Database suport and PHP suport on your server correct?

[HaTE]

you need to have a web server or a web hosting account or just a computer that has a web server with php and mysql, then all you need to do once you have one of those is just upload the files to the ut and run the install file, the config file will be created by running the install script.

[Foxie3a]

Ok, I see how to upload it and all, but now for the editing part.

I hope that the server will have the requirements, if not, I will tell him to upgrade...its not my problem.

So getting it installed is not the problem now. The problem would now be changing the information contained in it to be unique to my site.

And I can have this as only one small part of it, right?

[deRusett]

Originally posted by HaTE
you need to have a web server or a web hosting account or just a computer that has a web server with php and mysql, then all you need to do once you have one of those is just upload the files to the ut and run the install file, the config file will be created by running the install script.

you no longer need mySQL php5 has a SQL database built in.




Foxie3a, once you have uploaded the files to a server that allows PHP and Database access, you can edit your forum using the admin link which would be on your forums main page,


to install it just follow these instructions

http://www.phpbb.com/support/documents.php?mode=install#quickinstall

[Foxie3a]

I might not actually get the site up for some time though, so I can't even change it until then?

It would be nice to have it all ready so that I just have to upload it.

Developement takes a lot of time.

[deRusett]

then you need to set up apache, PHP, and mySQL on your system and install and do everything that way

then upload everything to your site later.

[HaTE]

Originally posted by deRusett
you no longer need mySQL php5 has a SQL database built in.


that nice, but it dosen't matter if php has 100 databases built in, phpBB has to support them and phpBB dosen't support SQLite in the current stable 2.0.6 version of phpBB, to get support for SQLite, you would need to use phpBB 2.1.0 which isn't stable.


Originally posted by Foxie3a
I might not actually get the site up for some time though, so I can't even change it until then?

It would be nice to have it all ready so that I just have to upload it.

Developement takes a lot of time.

if you run windows and dont want to spend alot of time / dont know how to setting up a server, check out www.easyphp.org its a good program that will install apache, php and mysql

[Foxie3a]

I do'nt want to do it all on my computer, so I guess that I will design the website, everything aside from this forum section that I will do once I get it uploaded onto my server.