Given the many years of myBB being around, I find the installation from the command line very disappointing, archaic, frustrating and a real head ache. I had been hoping to have it as easy and effortless as WordPress, but unfortunately it isn’t. After plenty of struggles I finally settled with the following combo of command line and SFTP steps:
1. I used VestaCP to create a database and database user – jotted down the names and password.
2. I then navigated to the Github download area for myBB and jotted down the path to the latest tar.gz package:
https://github.com/mybb/mybb/archive/mybb_1813.tar.gz
3. I then fired up my Putty and navigated to the root of my domain. For Vesta CP it’s something like this.:
cd /home/admin/web/domain.com/public_html
4. Then installed the tar.gz folder:
wget https://github.com/mybb/mybb/archive/mybb_1813.tar.gz
5. Then unzipped it:
tar xf mybb_1813.tar.gz
6. The contents of myBB are in mybb_1813 folder – so one has to move the contents one directory up and technically the following should be working – but in my case it did not:
mv mybb_1813/* .
Here’s some homework on the subject for experimentation next time round:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/19344/move-folder-content-up-one-level
So instead of struggling further I opened my File Zilla – navigated to the folder and then moved the contents of the folder one directory up so that it was directly in the public_html folder of my domain.
7. I then deleted the tar.gz as well as the empty mybb_1813 folder.
8. I don’t know why myBB makes it this difficult as WordPress automatically creates a configuration file during its installation process – but with myBB one now has to find the config.default.php file in the .inc folder and rename it config.php. I did this easily in FileZilla. This is the command line one should be using but somehow I must have muddled it as it wouldn’t take:
mv inc/config.default.php inc/config.php
9. Next one has to change the permissions of the config.php and a few other folders and files. I managed to do this easily on the command line:
chmod 666 inc/config.php inc/settings.php
chmod 777 cache/ cache/themes/ uploads/ uploads/avatars/
I also changed the myBB optional permissions:
chmod 666 inc/languages/english/*.php inc/languages/english/admin/*.php
chmod 777 cache/ cache/themes/ uploads/ uploads/avatars/ admin/backups/
And additionally the owner and group of the domain contents with the following commands:
chown admin -R *
chgrp admin * -R
11. Finally I could go for the “install” step by navigating to the install folder in the browser address line:
http://domain.com/install
12. myBB then comes up with a test page to check whether all of the permissions are OK. Mine was perfect – thank goodness. Next it asks for the database name, user name and password. And finally asks for information about the Forum and the user name and password of the Admin. All of it quite doable.
13. MyBB then locks the install folder and provides links for accessing the new myBB Forum and/or Admin Panel.
I’m quite experienced with working with the settings in the Admin Panel of myBB so that’s the easy part for me. Next challenge will be how to install a new theme. More about this in a next post.