[Professor 0110]

Hello and welcome to the complete mybb guide/tutorial. In this tutorial, I will explain from how to install mybb, to how to make your own theme, install plugins and configure your board. Please bare with me that this is my first tutorial on the subject, so if anyone wants to see something added up there can personal message me or post in the thread. Enough chitchatting, lets pass onto the main part.

• MyBB
  • MyBB Installation
    
  • General & Server Configuration
    
  • Forums & Posts
    
  • Groups & Users
    
  • Plugins
    
  • Database
• Miscellaneous
  • Make 1.4.x plugins work on 1.6.x
    

---

• • 

Okay, so the first step is to install the latest version of MyBB. Please follow these easy steps:

• Firstly, download the latest version of MyBB.
  
• Unpack the .RAR file, there should be 2 folders: Documentation and Upload.
  
• Open Upload and select everything in the folder and Right Click > Add to Archive. Chose ZIP as the Archive format and Best as the compression method.
  
• Navigate to your root directory and upload and extract the archive you've just made.
  
• Now, go to www.yoursite.com (Replace yoursite.com with your domain) and add /install/ at the very end.
  
• Uncheck Send anonymous statistics about your server specifications to the MyBB Group and hit Next >
  
• Again click Next >, now when you get to the Requirements Check part, make sure everything is Writable. If everything is alright, hit Next > if not ask your host.
  
• It's time to enter the database information that will allow MyBB to install. Please follow the image below:
  
  
• After clicking Next > about 3 times, it should prompt you to enter the forum name and etc... Follow the image, like you did last time:
  
  
• Now is the time where you set your administrator account. I didn't put an image for that, because it's pretty straight forward.
  
• After doing that, please delete or rename the install directory from your root folder. Reload http://www.yoursite.com and walla, MyBB has been installed!
  

• • 

This is the most vital part of creating your own forum, so you need to be extra careful with what you touch in the admin panel. Firstly, what you would want to do is navigate to http://yoursite.com/admin/ (Replace http://yoursite.com with your domain) and login with the administrator account we've created. You'll see lots of options, don't worry I'll cover most if not all of them. What we will learn in this part is using the Configuration tab. Click on that, and you should see a bunch of options. Next what you want to click is Show All Settings which is located on the right part of the page right above the search function. Clicking that will expand all of the options we can adjust to fit our likings. I'm now going to list you the options you can edit below:

• Board Online / Offline
  
  • Board Closed - Here you can close or open your board!
    Recommended: On
  
  
• General Configuration
  • Board Name - The name of your forum.
    
  • Board URL - The location of your forum.
    
  • Homepage Name - The name of your homepage. This will appear in the footer with a link to it.
    
  • Homepage URL - The location of your homepage.
    
  • Admin Email - The administrator's email address.
    
  • Contact Us Link - This will be used for the Contact Us link on the bottom of all the forum pages.
    
  • Default Language - The default language that MyBB should use for guests and for users.
    
  • Show Version Numbers - Allows you to turn off the public display of version numbers in MyBB.
    Recommended: Off
    
  • CAPTCHA Images for Registration & Posting - Show CAPTCHA when users register.
    Recommended: On
    
  • Reported Posts Medium - Specify how you want the reported posts to be dealt with.
    Recommended: Stored in the Database
    
  • Stats Limit - The number of threads on the stats page for most replies.
    Recommended: 8
    
  • Show Language Selector in Footer - Allow members to select languages from the footer.
    Recommended: No
    
  • Contact Fax No - If you have a FAX number, enter it here.
• Server and Optimization Options
  • Friendly Redirection Pages - This will disable the page it redirects you after you searched for something.
    Recommended: Off
    
  • Output template start/end comments? - This allows the output of template start/end comments in the HTML.
    Recommended: On
    
  • Enable XMLHttp request features? - This will enable or disable XMLHttp features.
    Recommended: On
    
  • Advanced Stats / Debug information - Shows the server load, parse time and etc. in the footer. Admins can see it only!
    Recommended: On
• Forum Home Options
  • Show Forum Descriptions? - This allows the description for forums.
    Recommended: On
    
  • Subforums to show on Index listing - The number of subforums to be visible in the index page.
    Recommended: 5
    
  • Hide Private Forums? - This option enables hiding of private forums.
    Recommended: On
    
  • Forums' Moderator Listing - You can chose to display forum moderators on each forum on the index.
    Recommended: On
    
  • Show Today's Birthdays? - Displays the today's birthdays on the index.
    Recommended: Off
    
  • Show Small Stats Section - The stats under the members online.
    Recommended: On
    
  • how x viewing forum - Displays the current active users viewing each forum.
    Recommended: Off
• User Registration and Profile Options
  • Disable Registrations - Allows you to disable or enable registrations.
    Recommended: Off
    
  • Registration Method - Select the activation method.
    Recommended: Instant Activation
    
  • Maximum Registrations Per IP Address - Chose the number of registrations per IP Address.
    Recommended: 1
    
  • Allow HTML in Signatures - Allow HTML codes in signatures?
    Recommended: Off
    
  • Allow Smilies in Signatures - Allow the use of smilies in signatures?
    Recommended: Off

These are the options I mostly alter to fit my needs, but there are plenty more so you need to go check the rest out. If you have any doubts of what the option does, just post here or personal message me!

• • 

This is the second vital part of your board's future. To access the "Forums & Posting" part of the admin panel please click Forum & Posts from the tab. In this tab, you can add, remove, edit, set the order of forums, subforums and forum announcements. We are going to learn how to add forums, subforums and announcements in this area.

To add a forum, please follow these instructions:

• Click Add new Forum from the 2 tabbed menu.
  
• Please change the information to fit your needs, in my case I did a testing forum. Look at the image below:
  
  
• After writing the name and description of the forum scroll down and hit Save Forum. (Be sure that there is at least 1 category, so this forum can be a child forum on)
  
• You're wondering how do I make a category? It's simple, do the same just select Category instead of Forum at the top and yo're done.

To add an announcement to a forum, please follow these instructions:

• Click Forum Announcements from the left menu.
  
• Click Add an announcement, located from the right to the forum you want to announce something to.
  
• Please change the information to fit your needs, in my case I set the title to Announcement Title. Look at the image below:
  
  
• If you are wondering why I have disabled HTML, it's cause I don't usually use it when writing announcements.
  
• After you are done writing everything, proceed by scrolling to the very bottom of the page and hitting Save Announcement
  
• And walla, you have just posted a new announcement on a forum.

• • 

That's the 3rd and most vital part of your forums. Without the users, there isn't a forum, without a group of members, there isn't a forum. Hope you get what I'm saying. In this part I'll carefully explain to you in step-by-step mini-tutorials how to add a user, modify a user, add a group and change admin permissions.

To add a user, please follow the instructions below:

• Click on Users & Groups and from the 4 tabbed menus select Create New User.
  
• Enter the credentials of the user, the username, password and e-mail address.
  
• In the Primary Usergroup you will chose the usergroup you want the user to be in, in my case I selected Administrators. In the Additional User Groups you can select any additional usergroups you want the member to be in, note that if the member is an administrator it gains the permissions of all other groups. And on Display User Group you would want to select the user's display group, in my case Administrators.
  
• After you are done with that just click Save User and it will automatically create a new user!

To modify a user, please follow the instructions below:

• Please click on the username you wish to edit.
  
• Now you will see about 6 tabs, in which 5 of them you can modify data.
  
• In the Profile you can edit the following settings:
  • Username
    
  • New Password
    
  • E-mail
    
  • Primary User Group
    
  • Additional User Groups
    
  • Display User Group
    
  • Custom User Title
    
  • Website
    
  • ICQ Number
    
  • AIM Handle
    
  • Yahoo! Messenger
    
  • MSN Messenger
    
  • Gender
    
  • Location
    
  • Biography
• In the Account Settings you can edit the following settings:
  • Hide from Online list?
    
  • Receive emails from administrators
    
  • Hide email address from other members
    
  • Only receive private messages from buddy list
    
  • Receive private messages from other users
    
  • Alert with notice when new private message is received
    
  • Notify by email when new private message is received
    
  • Date Format
    
  • Time Format
    
  • Time Zone
    
  • Display users' signatures in their posts
    
  • Display users' avatars in their posts
    
  • Posts per page
    
  • Show MyCode formatting options on posting pages
    
  • Default Board Language
    
  • Default Board Theme
    
  • Daylight Saving Time correction

To add a group, please follow the instructions below:

• Same as the "To add a user" part, but instead we will select Groups from the left menu.
  
• Now click Add New Group, and fill in the information you want.
  
• The fun part with this option, is that you can use HTML to enchant the group you are creating. Below I will list the options on how to add color, underline and strike.
  Color: <span style="color: red;" >{username}</span>
  Bold: <strong>{username}</strong>
  Underlined: <u>{username}</u>
  Italic: <i>{username}</i>
  Strikeout: <s>{username}</s>
  Text Blink: <blink>{username}</blink>

There are a few more that you could do, but this forum doesn't allow the usage of HTML codes in posts so I can't really show you :(

• • 

I'm going to brake it down to 2 pieces for you. This is the section where I'll explain to you how to install plugins & activate them. Firstly, you would need a good plugin that you will use for the forums. For that, I suggest registering and paying a total of $10.00 for a subscription which unlocks a hell lot of a themes, plugins and mods for MyBB 1.4.x and 1.6.x versions. Today, I'll be installing the Tabbed Menu plugin which was created by our administrator Omniscient who is known as lаbrocca on MyBBCentral.

First of all please navigate to the following directory root/inc/plugins/ where root is the directory where you installed mybb. Upload your plugin which is in .PHP format, or if the plugin contains multiple folders just archive them like we did in the installation part and upload them and extract them. Go to your admin panel, and select Plugins and walla you'll see your plugin in that list. Just simply hit Activate and your plugin will be successfully and activated!

• • 

This is the last vital part of your forum. Basically without a database, a website wouldn't be a website at all or a forum wouldn't be a forum in our case. This part of the admin panel is located in the Tools & Maintenance. From there, you can do the following:

• Recount
  • Rebuild Thread Counters
    
  • Rebuild Forum Counters
    
  • Recount Statistics
    
  • Recount User Post Counts
    
  • Rebuild Attachment Thumbnails
• Make a database backup
  
• Optimize Database

It's pretty straight forward so I'll not make a mini-tutorial on how to do them each, because it's only one click away.

Make plugins work from 1.4.x to 1.6.x MyBB:
To do that, you need to edit the .PHP file and look for:

PHP Code


<?php 
return array(
        'name'            => 'Tabbed Menu',
        'description'    => 'Adds tabbed menu to your index page.',
        'website'        => 'http://www.mybbcentral.com',
        'author'        => 'Jesse Omni',
        'authorsite'    => 'http://www.webmasterforums.biz',
        'version'        => '1.1',
        "guid"             => "",
        "compatibility" => "1.4"
    ); 


And just alter the compatibility to *. So it will look like

PHP Code


<?php 
return array(
        'name'            => 'Tabbed Menu',
        'description'    => 'Adds tabbed menu to your index page.',
        'website'        => 'http://www.mybbcentral.com',
        'author'        => 'Jesse Omni',
        'authorsite'    => 'http://www.webmasterforums.biz',
        'version'        => '1.1',
        "guid"             => "",
        "compatibility" => "*"
    ); 


That's it for this tutorial, please PM me any questions or post them here!

[iPixel]

Very helpful guide, should help a lot of members.

I was just about to make one of these, but you beat me to it. :)

Good work man.

[John*]

One of the most amazing tutorials ever. This should get stickied without a doubt!

[Haunted™]

VERY HIGH QUALITY TUTORIAL , CHEERS *

[Professor 0110]

Very helpful guide, should help a lot of members.

I was just about to make one of these, but you beat me to it. :)

Good work man.

Thanks Sparky man. I hope this helps members, and as always have a nice day people.

[Hydra]

Very Nice! Will help many! Keep it Up!

[Eagle 95]

It has never been hard to install a forum as far as I know, on other side, overall good guide.

[Decim]

Pretty nice guide, although you forgot to add the Theme Creation doc as mentioned in the table of contents.

[Professor 0110]

Yeah, I'll edit that part out since I probably hit the maximum characters.

[Deal]

Very nice.
Keep up the HQ threads.

[Professor 0110]

Thanks for the comment, Vanadium. I have said it once, and I'll say it again. If you have any trouble, don't hesitate to ask. I'll gladly help you!

[Bad Blood]

"Recommended: Instant Activation"

So you don't recommend image and email verification? That's interesting. Your forum would get a lot of bot registrations.

[Professor 0110]

I'm recommending that for starters, because mostly people from my country can't be bothered to go to their e-mail. You can change that option later on!

[BitzDefender]

This isn't too great. Simply a tutorial on how to get around MyBB. Not helpful to advanced users.

[Professor 0110]

As I mentioned, it's useful for beginners who just started with MyBB! Hence that's why the thread is named "From beginner to professional!"!