The Web Hosting Blog of Host Color

In the last post on Mary’s Column, we talked a bit about the Simple Machines Forum and it’s potential use in creating a user community or forum. We talked about features, advantages, requirements, etc. In today’s article, we’re going to start creating a forum using SMF on a Host Color hosting account. I am going to be building my forum at http://www.forums.usercraze.com.

I am going to assume as before that you already have your hosting account set up and that you have access to your cPanel (See cPanel Video Tutorial), you have a domain name (or subdomain) that you want to develop a site on using MODx, and that you have an FTP program set up for transferring files from your computer to your Host Color account. Remember that you can click on the images on this tutorial for larger versions.

1. Download SMF

The first step is of course to get the SMF package from the download page.  At the time of this posting, SMF is at version 1.1.11.  Version 2.0RC is out, but is not recommended for production sites yet, so we’re going to download and install 1.1.11. When the time comes that v2.0 is ready for production, we’ll upgrade our forum, but for now we’re installing the stable version.

Since we’re doing a fresh install, I have downloaded the full install package.

2. Upload the files

The next step is to upload the files to our hosting account folder where we want the forum to sit. You can either upload the tarball and unzip it in your file manager, or unzip it on your desktop and upload the files.

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

Now that the files are uploaded, we’re ready to install the script, but first we need a database where SMF will store it’s data.

3. Create a database

To create the database where SMF will store it’s data and information, the steps are very much the same as the ones we covered in the MODx install tutorial, so I will not repeat them here. If you need directions on how to do this, look at http://blog.hostcolor.com/2009/11/15/install-modx-on-hostcolor/

As always, make sure that you note the full database name with the prefix as well as the username and password. We will need this information in the next step.

4. Install SMF

We are now ready to go ahead and install SMF on our account. We have downloaded and uploaded the install package, and created a database and user.

If you now enter the url of your forum website in the browser, you will see the beginning page of the SMF install. The first part is the Basics Settings, where you enter your forum name, and some other settings. Apart from the forum name, you can pretty much leave the other settings as is, or change them. The url will probably always be correct and you don’t need to change it. You can also leave the Gzip output setting checked since Host Color server settings support it.

Below the Basic Settings is the MySQL settings, and this is where you need to enter the database details from step 3.

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

Bear in mind that you have to enter your database details exactly as you created them in step 3. For example in the database name, you have to remove the smf_ suffix and type in your own database name.

Once you’re done with this step, click on the Proceed button to continue. If your database details were correct, you’ll now be asked to enter the administrator user details.

The username you enter here is the one that you will use for logging into your SMF website. You cannot change this later, so choose wisely. It might be wise to avoid using something obvious like “admin” for security purposes You will need to enter your database user password from step 3 here again. Click finish to complete the install.

The next screen you will see shows that the install was successful.  You should check the box that says to delete install.php for security purposes.  If for some reason the deletion is not successfully, make sure that you go back in and manually delete that file from your account.

You can now click on the link on that page to take you to your forum, and as you can see, the SMF forum has been installed and we’re ready to start building and configuring our community.

In the next post on we are going to go over the SMF admin area and how to configure your new SMF forum, so stay tuned to Mary’s Corner for more.  As always, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to head on over to the Host Color Forums and ask away. If you need web hosting please review SMF Web Hosting plan

About Mary:
I am a part time web developer and full time web enthusiast who is very committed to open source technologies and promoting their potential for use across the web. Some of the technologies that I am involved in are MODx CMS and Drupal.  I am also a fan of Wordpress, SMF, phpBB, and any and all open source endeavors. I enjoy learning new things and teaching people what I know in ways that are simple (I hope) to understand.  You can find me on the Host Color Forums (username is mary), at my blog (The Coding Pad) or follow me on twitter (@einsteinsboi).