Installing phpBB 3 on phpBB Web Hosting

phpBB3 (codenamed “Olympus”) is an open source online discussion (forum) software which is available free of charge for both personal & enterprise use with the GPL license. phpBB 3 includes a new set of features, updates to old features and security measures from the previous version of phpBB. There is a page demonstrating the changes between both on the phpBB 3 website

phpBB 3 web hosting

All of vexxhost's affordable web hosting plans are equipped with Fantastico which allows you to use vexxhost for phpBB hosting, the advantage of our web hosting plans versus other web hosting plans is that you can install phpBB by simply locating the Fantastico button in your web hosting control panel and selecting "phpBB" on the left side of the page, the instructions are very easy and simple to follow on that page and you should be up and running within minutes.

cPanel web Hosting

1. Make sure that your web hosting company supports phpBB
   Frequently, people go through all the other steps to be stopped at a step eventually because they forgot to make sure that their web hosting company supports the requirements of phpBB 3. It would be best to verify with your web hosting company if they support the following requirements.
2. Download the phpBB 3 software package
   You should download the phpBB 3 script — phpBB 3 is available for no charge weather you are using it for personal or business usage. You should pick the “Full package” as we will be installing phpBB 3 from scratch.
3. Extract the downloaded file and upload it to your web hosting account
   Once you have downloaded the ZIP file, you should extract it on your computer using a utility, if you have Windows XP or newer, you should be able to open the ZIP file directly, if not, you can simply download a utility such as WinZIP, WinRAR and extract the archive with it. Once you have extracted the files from the ZIP file, you should upload the content of your phpBB3 directory into your website (to the directory where you'd like).
4. Create a database for phpBB 3 usage
   One of phpBB 3's new features is a support for a wide range of database software; the most common database software used on shared web hosting services is MySQL. If you are not using cPanel for your web hosting, you should check with your control panel manual. You should login to your control panel and click on “MySQL databases”, when the page is loaded, enter the name of your new phpBB 3 database in the “new database” text box and click on the “create database” button. You should see a message that says that your database has been created. Take a note of that database name.
5. Create a database user for phpBB 3
   The following steps are for cPanel only, if you have a different control panel, you should instruct your control panel manual. While still in your control panel main page, click on “MySQL databases”. Scroll down to the “New user” section and enter a username & a password in their respective fields, take note of that username and password as you'll need them later and press the “Create user” button, you should get a message that confirms it by says the username was created successfully.
6. Give permissions to the created user to the database
   The following steps are for cPanel only, if you have a different control panel, you should instruct your control panel manual. While still in your control panel main page, click on “MySQL databases”. Go to the “Add user to database” section and select the user that you have created in step 5 and select the database that you have created in step 4 and press the "submit" button, you should get a page with all the MySQL privilages, you should select the “ALL PRIVILEGES” which should automatically select all of the other checkboxes, after doing that, click on “Make Changes” to commit the database assignment and you should get a confirmation that the user has been assigned to the database.
7. Complete the phpBB 3 installation
   To complete the installation, you should visit your website to the directory where you uploaded your phpBB 3 files at and the installation wizard provided by phpBB 3 should be there, the rest of the installation process should be seamless from there when you will be asked to enter database information, you should select “MySQL” and enter the username/password/database name that you noted earlier, you might also need to change the CHMOD some directories so that should be done using FTP.
8. Delete the install directory
   Once you're done installing everything and your forum is done and ready, you should delete the “install” directory as it is a big potential security risk that isn't worth taking.