Completely New To Setting Up Forums

[surgio65]

I'm trying to get a forum set up on my web site by I have NO idea where to start. I went into the control panel for my web site to create a phpBB2 forum, and when I go into my FTP program I can see that all of the files necessary for the forum are there, I just dont know what to do with them all.

Maybe I'm being a little too vague here, but I seriously have no idea what to do next. I've looked over the readme files and it's all jibberish to me. Can anyone offer some help?

Thanks

Surgio

[jason]

Just go to www.yourdomain.com/forum and it should be ready to run. If you go back to your CPanel and Click on PHP Auto-Installer again. It will say "phpBB2 is already installed." Under that there will be an overview link. Click that link and you will get a link to the administration area where you can set up topics and moderate the messages.

--Jason

[surgio65]

I did all of those things already. Maybe I'm missing something. I just went into the control panel and initiated the 'phpBB autoinstaller." I've not messed around with the MySQL section or anything else. Here's the error I get whenever I try to enter my forum or the admin section of the forum:

phpBB : Critical Error
Could not connect to the database

So next I tried to uninstall the forum and then install it again. Every time I install it I get this error:

Install phpBB2 (2/2)
/home/whenmenw/public_html/forum/config.php configured
/home/whenmenw/public_html/forum/data.sql configured
ERROR 1049: Unknown database 'whenmenw_bbforum'

My subscription on Jaguar PC is a "Basic Package," but I could have sworn that I could set up a database for a forum. Am I mistaken? It's really no big deal . . . my site wont die without a forum, but it would have been nice to have one.

- Surgio

[smartcomputers]

I haven't tried CPanel's installer but does at some point ask you to fill in your database username and password as well as the database name?
I guess the first thing you must do is create a database to which you wish to install phpBB2, and then create a user for this database. You then provide these details to the installer.

[jason]

No, the installer just uses a hard coded database name and automatically creates a user to access it. The install process is supposed to be totally automated.

I just installed phpBB on my site to see how the installer works, and after submitting the forms, I have a fully operational forum.

Surgio,

I'm not sure what server you're on, but some of the servers have been having MySQL problems lately. If you are still having problems, you should open a support ticket. It sounds as if that's what's going on.

--Jason

[surgio65]

Thanks for the suggestion to open up a 'support ticket,' Jason. I did just that and they fixed the problem. The problem was with the MySQL database. I signed up under the old "Basic" subscription package, which had no MySQL database access. They've since change the subscription packages around so I should have had 3 MySQL databases, but they weren't there. They fixed the problem, though, and now my forums are up and running!

Thanks again!

- Surgio