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.
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.
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, 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.
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 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
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/