How to set up a phpbb3 board for a lecture

• Back up the old database (not strictly necessary, but better safe than sorry) with mysqldump <old database> -p > <backup file>

  • This generates a file that contains the SQL commands necessary to restore the database

• Call dpkg-reconfigure phpbb3

  • When you are asked whether you want to reinstall the database answer "yes". The default values are ok for everything, except for the question which database to use. Remember to enter a new name here or you will overwrite the old one!
• Change the first 3 lines of /etc/apache2/conf.d/phpbb3.conf to

  •   # Note: order matters
      Alias <url-path>/images /var/lib/phpbb3/images
      Alias <url-path> /usr/share/phpbb3/www

• /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Now you can login as admin (the dpkg-reconfigure dialogue told you the password) phpbb3 needs some more information to send valid emails (if you don't set these options it will send broken emails that will be rejected by any standard conforming mailserver.

• Set "Server settings -> Domain Name" to www.ps.uni-saarland.de

• Set "E-Mail settings -> Contact/Return email address" to noreply@ps.uni-saarland.de