Copyright (C) 1998, Netbula LLC, All rights reserved. AnyBoard installation guide New in Version 4.0.1 * Moderating. When this feature is enabled, posts have to be approved by moderator first. * Other improvements New features in Version 3.2 * RATING. Allow readers to rate articles, rated posts have stars and number of votes next to subject. * Many minor improvements New features in Version 3.0 *Email notification of new posts *Email validation and rule acceptance for user registration *Allow choice of main forum page filename (default is index.ext for automatic loading) *More customization available *Better handling of caching problem when followups are inlined *Improved function descriptions Please read this document very carefully. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Welcome, and thank you for choosing AnyBoard. You will find installation and configuration exceptionally easy, whether you know Unix commands fluently or are a PC with Windows user uploading via FTP to a Linux or Unix based server. AnyBoard is self-configuring, which makes the process as easy as it can be. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Zero configuration installation method If you don't need user registration and forum creation via the web features, skip steps 2) - 4.1) and simply follow instructions in step 4.2) below. Note: Don't be confused by the http:://site/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi/dir1/dir2/?cmd=log URL syntax you will see. Here, /dir1/dir2/ is merely another parameter passed to the anyboard.cgi script, it is NOT a directory under /cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi. Installation procedure 1) Modify the PERL path and, optionally, SMTP server name in anyboard.cgi Make sure you are using PERL5. Version 4 won't work, you will see internal server errors! Always ask your sys admin if not sure. If you want to use email validation and email notification features set the correct $smtp_server variable. SMTP server is the one through which email is SENT. 2) Create master config directory and modifiy anyboard.cgi Login to your web server. Make a new directory, say, MASTERD. Set the $master_cfg_dir variable in anyboard.cgi script to be the absolute path to MASTERD. Using Telnet or FTP, this step can be achieved by % mkdir MASTERD % chmod 777 MASTERD % cd MASTERD % pwd Edit anyboard.cgi by setting $master_cfg_dir to the output from the pwd command. 3) Copy or upload anyboard.cgi to your CGI directory. Change its permission to 755. Example: at shell or FTP prompt %chmod 755 anyboard.cgi 4.1) Create new forum via the WEB (for this to work, you must do step 2) a) Use browser to access the following URL, make sure you turned on cookies. http://yoursite/your-cgi-dir/anyboard.cgi?cmd=init When you access this URL the first time, AnyBoard will ask you to create the master administrator by entering a name and password. After you created master admin, this URL brings to the forum creation form. b) Enter master admin username/passwd c) Enter virtual path to forum directory to be created, this directory must be non-existant. virtual path is the path after the domain name, for example, for http://netbula.com/products/powerrpc/ virtual path is /products/powerrpc/ for http://yourdomain/~user/forum/ the virtual path is /~user/forum/ d) choose forum admin (administrator) name and Submit the form. The new forum will be created and admin login window will show up. (or an error will show up) Login as the admin (no passwords) and start configure the forum. 4.2) Manual creation of new forum If the WEB creation method failed, there are several possible reasons, most probably due to invalid permissions, you should try to resolve the problem. In any case, you can still create the forum manually. a) make a directory to host the forum (call it {FORUMDIR}) b) go to the {FORUMDIR}, and make the following sub directories: posts, postdata, archive c) while in {FORUMDIR}, create a file named .forum_cfg (note the dot), this is the forum config file, you can leave it empty, or you can copy it from another forum (such as the demos). d) make sure the directories and the .forum_cfg file is writeable by the CGI. At shell or FTP prompt, this can be done by the following command sequence % mkdir {FORUMDIR} % chmod 777 {FORUMDIR} % cd {FORUMDIR} % mkdir archive posts postdata % touch .forum_cfg (for FTP upload the .forum_cfg file) % chmod 777 archive %chmod 777 posts %chmod 777 postdata %chmod 666 .forum_cfg (You may not need 777 permission if setuid CGI is used) Or you can simply copy (or upload) the directory forum_dir/ found in the distribution package to a new directory and change forum_dir/ to whatever name you want. Now the forum is created, you need to configure it first, by the URL http://yoursite/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi/forum_virtual_path/?cmd=log The default administrator name is admin, login and start configure the forum,The forum main page will be generated each time you configure it. If you do the above, you have a forum running, create more as needed. Configuration: AnyBoard has over 100 confiiguration parameters, see the AnyBoard manual for details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please visit http://netbula.com/anyboard for the most recent information, including new releases. ------------------------------------------------------------------------