How to install SMF forum script

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How to install SMF forum script

Simple Machines Forum (or SMFT for short) is a well known professional grade and open source forum board script. It can be customized in a very simple way, templates and plugins/modifications are available in a great number on their custom modification site. It’s also really simple to manage and use this forum script. In this article I’m going to show you how you can install SMF forum script on your hosting account in just a few steps.

Download SMF forum script

First of all we need to download the smf forum script, at the time of this article the latest version is SMF 2.0.2. You can download this by clicking the download link below:

Download SMF Forum 2.0.2

Preparing the installation process

As in every script you need two important things:

  1. Mysql details (MySQL hosname, MySQL database, MySQL User, Mysql Password)
  2. Means for uploading the script to your web server (You can use a FTP client like Filezilla or just use Filemanager directly from your hosting control panel)

For step one, you can use this article to see how you can create a MySQL user and database using cPanel. For step two you will either need to download Filezilla or use Filemanager from your hosting account.

SMF also requires the following files and folders to have writeable permission 777 (or 775 if your host doesn’t allow 777) for folders and permission 666 for files:

Running the SMF Forum script installer

To begin the installation process, you only need to view in your browser the install.php file. This is normally at:

http://www.yourdomain.com/smf/install.php

where the folder “smf” was the folder where you’ve uploaded your content. If you’ve uploaded your smf forum script in your document root, this would be directly /install.php.

If the permission was set correct on Settings.php and Setting_bak.php, you should see a page asking you for:

  • Forum Name – Your forum board name
  • Forum URL – Your forum board URL
  • Database type – Your forum board database type, this should be MySQL or MySQLi
  • Server name – Your MySQL Server/Hostname, this is usually localhost
  • Username – Your MySQL username
  • Password – Your MySQL password
  • Database name – Your MySQL database name
  • Database prefix – Your database prefix, this can be left as it is.

After you entered your details, click on proceed, on the next page you will need to enter your details for your SMF forum script admin account. This will create you a user account that will allow you to fully manage your SMF forum script. Also, for security reasons, you are also asked for the MySQL user password, which is the same you entered before.

Click on proceed to complete the installation and you’re all done. At the end of this, you will be asked to remove the install.php, it is very IMPORTANT to remove this. The installer gives your the option to attempt removal of the file by clicking on the check box to to remove the file. If this doesn’t succeed, please remove this using Filemanager or Filezilla.

And that is all, SMF forum script is now installed and you can start browsing/using/configure it the way you want. If any problems arrive, please comment bellow!

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