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How to Install MyBB on Debian 9

Last Updated: Fri, Feb 15, 2019
Debian Linux Guides Server Apps Social
Archived content

This article is outdated and may not work correctly for current operating systems or software.

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 Debian 9 Vultr instance.

Requirements

  • PHP, at least version 5.2, with the following extensions:

    • SimpleXML

    • mbstring

    • gd

    • The respective vendor specific database PHP extension

  • MySQL, at least version 5.0

  • Nginx

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

Before you begin

Check the Debian version.

lsb_release -ds

# Debian GNU/Linux 9.4 (stretch)

Ensure that your system is up to date.

apt update && apt upgrade -y

Install needed packages.

apt install -y sudo dirmngr unzip zip

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

adduser johndoe --gecos "John Doe"

usermod -aG sudo johndoe

su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Install PHP

Install PHP, as well as the required PHP extensions.

sudo apt install -y php7.0 php7.0-cli php7.0-fpm php7.0-gd php7.0-mbstring php7.0-xml php7.0-mysql php7.0-pgsql

Check the version.

php --version

# PHP 7.0.27-0+deb9u1 (cli) (built: Jan  5 2018 13:51:52) ( NTS )

Install MariaDB

Install MariaDB.

sudo apt install -y mariadb-server

Check the version.

mysql --version

# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.1.26-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.2

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

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Log into MariaDB as the root user.

sudo 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

Install and configure Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo apt install -y nginx

Check the version.

sudo nginx -v

# nginx version: nginx/1.10.3

Configure Nginx. Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/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 unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;

    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;

    include fastcgi_params;

  }



}

Activate the new mybb.conf configuration by linking the file to the sites-enabled directory.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mybb.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Install MyBB

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/mybb

Change ownership of the /var/www/mybb directory tojohndoe.

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_1816.zip

unzip mybb_1816.zip

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

Remove the downloaded .zip file.

rm mybb_1816.zip

rmdir Upload

Change ownership of the /var/www/mybb directory to www-data.

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

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 then 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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