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Welcome

Thanks for choosing MyBB as the discussion board software for your community. You are only steps away from completing the installation of your new forum. We've broken down the installation into many smaller steps, as you can see on the navigation bar on the right. Don't worry if it looks daunting; if you need any help, just post a thread in one of our Support Forums for the version you are running, and we will help you out.

Why should I install a MyBB forum?

• MyBB comes with the features that one would expect from a bulletin board software, as well as some unique features not found elsewhere.
• Having trouble with MyBB? The support at the MyBB Community Forums is free and available to anyone using MyBB, supported by the volunteer support team, and other members of the community!
• MyBB is easily customizable to suit your site's needs and looks.
• Best of all, it's entirely free! No forced advertisements, no cost, no sign-ups, no forced email subscriptions!

Requirements for installing

• You will require a web host to run your forum.
• Your web host must satisfy a few basic requirements for MyBB to run properly.

Initial Preparation

Downloading the MyBB Package

First, download the latest MyBB package from the MyBB website, on the downloads page. After downloading the zip file, unzip/decompress the file. On Windows, if you right click on the file, there should be an option similar to "Unzip," referring to the file (if you have WinZIP, WinRAR, or a similar program installed, do as instructed by the creators of the software). Unzip the contents of the file to a folder within the same folder that the zip is in, such as a folder called "mybb".

Once the unzipping process is complete, you will need to upload the files to your server, which is discussed in the next section of the install guide.

Installing MyBB on mySQL 4.0.x

To be able to install MyBB on mySQL 4.0.x, you need to make an alteration to a file first before running the installation script. This is a workaround, and not an alternative - mySQL 4.0 has already reached it's end of life so you really should upgrade as soon as possible.

In ./inc/db_mysql.php, delete/remove or comment out:

		if($success && $this->db_encoding)
		{
			$this->query("SET NAMES '{$this->db_encoding}'");
			if($write_success && count($this->connections) > 1)
			{
				$this->write_query("SET NAMES '{$this->db_encoding}'");
			}
		}
		return $success;

and also:

		return " CHARACTER SET {$this->db_encoding} COLLATE {$collation}";

This will allow you to install MyBB. If you have any problems, please report them at the Community Forums.

Note: These changes are not needed if your host has MySQL 5.0 or above.

Alternative install methods
(Community Developed, Not Officially Supported)

Aries-Belgium and Dylan M. have developed some alternative install methods for those with shell access to their accounts. These are single line commands. They are also not officially supported.

Requirements:

• access - Command Line Access to the Server
  
• wget, aria2 (version >= 1.9.3), curl, or lynx - Command used, depends on which you choose. These should be present or installable on any *NIX (Linux, UNIX, or Mac) based server.
  
• unzip, mv, rm, and chmod - These are all required, and should all be present already on any *NIX based server.

wget - by Aries-Belgium:

wget --content-disposition http://www.mybb.com/download/latest -O mybb.zip && unzip mybb.zip "Upload/*" && mv Upload/* . && rm -Rf Upload mybb.zip && mv inc/config.default.php inc/config.php && chmod -R 0777 cache uploads inc/settings.php inc/config.php

aria2 (>= 1.9.3, also use man aria2c to verify that your command is aria2c) - by Dylan M.:

aria2c http://www.mybb.com/download/latest -o mybb.zip && unzip mybb.zip "Upload/*" && mv Upload/* . && rm -Rf Upload mybb.zip && mv inc/config.default.php inc/config.php && chmod -R 0777 cache uploads inc/settings.php inc/config.php

curl - by Dylan M.:

curl http://www.mybb.com/download/latest -o mybb.zip && unzip mybb.zip "Upload/*" && mv Upload/* . && rm -Rf Upload mybb.zip && mv inc/config.default.php inc/config.php && chmod -R 0777 cache uploads inc/settings.php inc/config.php

lynx - by Dylan M.:

lynx -crawl -dump http://www.mybb.com/download/latest > mybb.zip && unzip mybb.zip "Upload/*" && mv Upload/* . && rm -Rf Upload mybb.zip && mv inc/config.default.php inc/config.php && chmod -R 0777 cache uploads inc/settings.php inc/config.php