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How to Install MyBB on CentOS 7

Last Updated: Fri, Jun 22, 2018
CentOS Linux Guides Server Apps Social

MyBB is a free and open source, intuitive and extensible forum program. MyBB source code is hosted on GitHub. This guide will show you how to install MyBB forum software on a fresh CentOS 7 Vultr instance.

Requirements

  • PHP, at least version 5.2

  • MySQL, at least version 5.0

  • Nginx

  • The following PHP extensions:

    • SimpleXML

    • mbstring

    • gd

    • The respective vendor specific database PHP extensions

NOTE: Replace all instances of example.com with your domain name.

Check the CentOS version.

cat /etc/centos-release

# CentOS Linux release 7.4.1708 (Core)

Create a new non-root user account with sudo access and switch to it.

useradd -c "John Doe" johndoe && passwd johndoe

usermod -aG wheel johndoe

su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

timedatectl list-timezones

sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Region/City'

Ensure that your system is up to date.

sudo yum update -y

Install necessary packages.

sudo yum install -y wget vim unzip bash-completion

Disable SELinux.

sudo setenforce 0

Enable the epel repository.

sudo rpm -Uvh  https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

Step 1 - Install PHP and required PHP extensions

Install PHP, as well as the necessary PHP extensions.

sudo yum install -y php php-cli php-fpm php-gd php-mbstring php-xml php-mysql php-pgsql

Check the version.

php --version

# PHP 5.4.16 (cli) (built: Mar  7 2018 13:34:47)

# Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group

# Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies

Enable and start php-fpm.

sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service

sudo systemctl start php-fpm.service

Step 2 - Install MariaDB and create a database for MyBB

Install MariaDB.

sudo yum install -y mariadb-server

Check the version.

mysql --version

# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 5.5.56-MariaDB, for Linux (x86_64) using readline 5.1

Enable and start MariaDB.

sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service

sudo systemctl start mariadb.service

Run the mysql_secure_installation script to improve the security of your MariaDB installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Log in to MariaDB as the root user.

mysql -u root -p

# Enter password:

Create a new MariaDB database and user, and remember the credentials.

CREATE DATABASE dbname CHARACTER SET utf8;

GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Exit MariaDB.

exit

Step 3 - Install and configure Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo yum install -y nginx

Check the version.

sudo nginx -v

# nginx version: nginx/1.12.2

Enable and start Nginx.

sudo systemctl enable nginx.service

sudo systemctl start nginx.service

Configure Nginx. Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/mybb.conf and populate the file with the following.

server {



  server_name forum.example.com;



  root /var/www/mybb;



  location / {

    index index.php;

  }



  # Deny access to internal files.

  location ~ /(inc|uploads/avatars) {

    deny all;

  }



  location ~ \.php$ {

    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;

    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;

    include fastcgi_params;

  }



}

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Step 4 - Install MyBB

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/mybb

Change ownership of the /var/www/mybb directory to johndoe.

sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /var/www/mybb

Download the latest release of MyBB and unzip it.

cd /var/www/mybb

wget https://resources.mybb.com/downloads/mybb_1815.zip

unzip mybb_1815.zip

mv /var/www/mybb/Upload/* /var/www/mybb

Remove the downloaded .zip file, as well as the Upload folder.

rm mybb_1815.zip

rmdir Upload

Change ownership of the /var/www/mybb directory to nginx.

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/mybb

Run sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and set the user and group to nginx. Initially, it will be set to apache.

sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

# user = nginx

# group = nginx

Restart php-fpm.

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

As the last step, open your domain and follow the installation wizard for MyBB. To access the installer you must navigate to the /install directory of your site in your web browser. For example: if your domain is example.com, and you uploaded your MyBB files to the root directory, navigate to http://example.com/install. To access MyBB admin append /admin to your site URL. You have successfully installed your MyBB.

After the installation, you should remove the /install directory from your server to prevent anyone else from running the installation again.

sudo rm -rf /var/www/mybb/install/

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