IceBB Forum Script – Step By Step Installation Guide

886 days ago

IceBB is a forum script based on PHP and MySQL. It is meant to be a lightweight, responsive and easy to use open source forum script. Although it might not be as popular as some of the other forum scripts out there, it is gaining popularity. One of its advantages is that this script can scale very well. So if you have an ever increasing number of users, then you should give this script a serious consideration. I have written this step by step installation guide to make it easy for beginners to get started with IceBB. However, this guide still requires users to have some knowledge of Windows and windows commands and ftp and hosting know-how.But for most, this shouldn’t be a problem. And as with most modern PHP scripts, the installation is actually very straightforward and should not be difficult for most. Furthermore, IceBB has a very active community to turn to for help. Your webhost should support PHP4.3 or above.

Okay, we will now start with the guide. Their website where you can download the script is located at http://icebb.net/. You should download the latest version of the script. At time of writing, the latest version was 1.0 rc10.

Click on Download Now! to download the IceBB forum script.

Save the file to somewhere in your computer. Do note the location where the file has been downloaded as you will need to access the file. It should not take very long to download as the file is pretty small – about 1.2MB.

After downloading the file, you will need to extract the files out. In this example, I am using IZArc. You can use any other unzipping software like UltimateZip or even Windows own extracting utility. It does not matter.

You will need to extract out all the files. Make sure you extract ALL the files in the archive. And again, note where you have extracted the files to as you will need to upload those files to your webserver.

There, all done.

The next step is to upload the files to your webserver. I am using Filezilla as my FTP client (File Transfer Protocol software). Of course, you can use other FTP clients, the steps should remain the same. You should refer to your software documentation for more information. I am using Filezilla as it is very stable and I do not have any problems with it. Once you have started your FTP Client, you will have to browse to the folder where you have extracted the files to. There should be a bunch of files like “admin”, “includes”, “install” and so on. These are the files and folders you will need to upload to your server. Connect to your webhost and if you so wish, create a directory on the server. So for example, if you are planning to have your forum in a subdirectory for example “http://www.example.com/forum” then you should create a subdirectory on your server “forum” and upload ALL the files to that subdirectory. Choose all the files and right click. You will be presented with an option to upload the files. Do it!

In this example, you can see that I have created a directory called “forum” and the files are to be uploaded to that directory.

Well, it might take a while, but as you can see the files have been uploaded. Again, please ensure that ALL the files and folders have been uploaded. Missing files can cause problems later now and they can be very difficult to troubleshoot.

Now, let’s start the IceBB installer. Browse to the URL of your website. Let’s say your website is www.example.com and the subdirectory is “forum”, then type “http://www.example.com/forum” into your browser. Once you have done that, you will be greeted with this above page.  Not to worry, it is a small problem and is expected. You will need to do some changes to your settings. As you can see, it tells you that the “config.php” file does not exist and is not writable. The uploads folder and the skins folder are also not writable. Now, we need to change that. You will need to go back to your FTP client.

Okay, now let’s find the “config.sample.php” file in your server (note: this is the file in your server and not on your local computer, aka the files you have just uploaded them to).  We will then need to rename the file from “config.sample.php” to “config.php”.Thus we right click on the “config.sample.php” file and choose rename.

Change the file name from “config.sample.php” to “config.php”. There one small step for webmaster, one big step for webserver. Now, we will need to change the file permissions. Some FTP clients call it CHMOD. They are basically the same thing. Again, if you are using some other FTP software, please refer to the program documentation on how to do it.

Right click on the newly renamed “config.php” and choose File permissions.

You will be able to change the file permissions (or file attributes) here. Give the numeric value of “777″. Or in other words, give full permissions to all. Some call it CHMOD 777. Don’t worry about security, we will be changing it back once we are done.

Now let’s change the file permission for the two other folders (uploads and skins). Right click on the uploads folder and choose file permissions.

As with the “config/php” file, give it a numeric value of “777″.  Do the same thing for the skins folder.

Now let’s get back to your browser and do a refresh. You will be greeted with the above page. And congrats, you are half way there. It tells you that everything is fine (all green)! Click on continue to go to the next page.

This is the page where you have to provide your MySQL settings. I have created a few tutorials for creating MySQL databases. If you are using Cpanel, please refer to my tutorial on creating MySQL Databases on Cpanel. If you are using DirectAdmin, please refer to my tutorial on creating MySQL Databases on DirectAdmin.You can also ask your webhost to create the database for you. They will then provide you with the MySQL Database name, theMySQL username and password. You will need this information in oder to setup the database for the IceBB forum. Once you have those information, you should key them in the corresponding boxes. As for the SQL Table prefix, unless you are sharing the database with other scripts, there is not really a need to change them. For the SQL host, it should generally be “localhost” unless your webhost states otherwise.

For the general settings, you should only change the Board Name. The rest should remain the same as the script will automatically detect the settings for you.


At the bottom of the page, you will need to create the Administrator account. You will need to note down the username and password and keep them safe as this will be the administrator to access your IceBB forum settings and configuration. Without this account, you cannot do any changes to your forum. So keep the username and password safe!

Click on Install to continue. The database will be setup with all the settings needed to get your forum up and running!

Ahhh……  all done.  But you will have to do some security procedures first before you celebrate.

Let’s go back to the FTP Client and change some permissions. Remember that you change the file permission of the “config.php” file to allow full access? You will need to change it back. So find the “config.php” file and right click. Then choose file permissions.

Change the numeric value back to 644 since you no longer need to write anything to the “config.php” file anymore.

Now let’s remove the install folder since we have finished installing the IceBB script. There is no longer a need for all the files in that folder. It is also a very big security risk to have the installer there. Let’s find the install folder and delete it. Right click on the install folder and choose delete.

There you are done. Now go and enjoy your brand new IceBB based forum.

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