Install and Customize an Xmb Forum

An XMB forum is a message board designed by The XMB Group.

A lightweight program, coded in PHP, it can easily be modified by users. Many hacks, or modifications, are available for the forum, as well as themes. Everything to do with this forum is made free to users, who also can share any modifications or themes they design. In only a matter of 15 minutes you can have a fully functional forum, ready to go, on your server.

Installing the forum

 * 1) If you already have the forum package on your computer, skip this step. Go to http://www.xmbforum2.com/ in your internet browser. At the top left corner, just beneath the Download XMB title, select the option presented, it is the latest version of the forum.
 * 2) Depending on your browser, you should be getting a notification of a download. Choose the option to save the file, desktop is recommended. Remember where you saved it, you will need it shortly.
 * 3) If you have already created a database for your forum, skip this step. Go to your server’s control panel and to the database section. Create a new database, add a user with full privileges to the database, and remember the database name, and your username and password that can access it.
 * 4) Extract the contents of the forum zip file to a location on your hard drive. Open your FTP client and connect to your server. Create a new directory in your server where you wish the forum to be installed. Locate the forum files on your hard disk and open the main folder and then open the files folder, transfer all the files and folders within it to the new directory. This will take a few minutes.
 * 5) In your internet browser, go to your domain’s forum folder, and add install/ at the end. It should look like the following: http://www.domainname.extension/forumfolder/install/. You should now be at a page titled XMB Installer.
 * 6) Follow the instructions on the webpage until you have installed everything and end up on a page saying Installation Complete. If the installation did not work, check your database settings and confirm the location of your forum on the server. For further troubleshooting, go to http://forums.xmbforum2.com/.

Configuring the forum

 * 1) In the upper right corner of the forum, you should see the options Login and Register. Login with the information you provided in the installation steps. Now at the same corner you should see a few more options, click on Administration Panel. This page will be where you make any administrative changes to your forum
 * 2) In the Administrative Panel, under the title General, select the option Settings. The Board Rules show up as the first step of a new user registration, as well at in the top menu bar of your forum. Any additional Languages or Themes will be made available to you if you download and install them correctly: refer to http://www.xmbforum2.com/. For the Optional Fields, selecting on will simply add optional fields for the user to enter when they register to your forum. The News in Newsticker is the scrolling text that is shown at the top of your forum’s index page, modify it to display any text you wish.
 * 3) In the Administrative Panel, under the title Look & Feel, select the option Themes. Select New Theme in bold, above and to the left of the Submit Changes button. Fill out the values as you wish to make your own custom theme, trial and error by saving and looking at the index page works well. Remember that the colour values are either in words or hexadecimal values, visit the following site for a custom hex colour generator: http://www.2createawebsite.com/build/hex-colors.html
 * 4) In the Administrative Panel, under the title Forums, select the option Forums. A Category is the title for a group of forums. A Forum is the place where threads are posted. A Sub-board is a division within a forum, where other threads can be posted.
 * 5) To make a new category, click on the text field that reads New Category and type in the name you wish to give it, for example Welcome Center.
 * 6) To make a new forum, click on the text field that reads New Forum and type in the name you wish to give it, for example Introductions. In the dropdown menu to the right of the On/Off dropdown menu, select which category you want your new forum to be listed under. Making a sub-board works the same way as making a new forum.
 * 7) In the Order box, type the number in which you want the function to appear comparatively to the other categories, forums in the same category, or sub-boards in the same forum. To delete something, select the checkbox to its left, and select Submit Changes. Remember to hit Submit Changes every time you fill out a form to have the changes take effect, view image 3 for the mentioned examples.

Tips

 * Binary mode should be used for transferring the files. Most FTP clients will do this automatically, but if you are using a command line FTP client, use the “bin” command prior to transferring.
 * On step 4 of the internet browser's installation process, the Configuration Method page, the default method is the simplest. As indicated on the page, fill out the form (see image 1), copy the resulting code into a new file called config.php and upload it using your FTP client into your forum’s main folder. Replace any already existing files. Only once you have configured your config.php file do you click Next Step.
 * You are a Super Administrator, meaning you have complete access to everything about your forum. You can also see any users appearing in invisible mode.
 * At the Themes page, select Details beside an existing theme to edit it. Also, base yourself off of it to get an idea of which border width, table width, table spacing and big font work well for new themes.

Warnings

 * Failure to upload a file or sub-directory will result in your forum not functioning properly.
 * The path to the theme images is defaulted to http://www.domainname.extension/forum/images/themename. When you save custom graphics, create a directory accordingly at the above path with the theme name, and point the theme’s Image Directory to it. For example, a theme and its images by the name Red would be at the path http://www.domainname.extension/forum/images/red and in the theme details you would set the image directory to images/red.

Things You'll Need

 * Internet connection
 * Internet browser
 * About 320 MB of room on your hard drive and your server
 * FTP access to your server
 * A database on your server

Sources and Citations

 * http://www.xmbforum2.com/
 * Welcome to the eXtreme Message Board (XMB) forum software documentation system.