We would like to mention some tips for Secure XenForo installation and configuration. XenForo is one of the most popular PAID forum software in the market right now. It has various cool features that make it stand as a unique and fantastic forum software.Secure XenForo installation and configuration is the first step which acts as base and future of your community. If you can get it installed properly and securely you would not have to worry about Many problems faced by Board owners when their community start to grow and get good amount of visitors.
XenForo Installation Steps:
Step 1:
XenForo is a paid software. Means developer expect yearly licence fee from customers to support the further development and feature upgrades. We have seen many people searching for “free xenforo forum software” or “download xenforo for free”. I would advice you not to indulge in such activities. Although this would be out of topic but still i think this quote would help you in your web ventures. We would like to discuss the basic steps to be considered before XenForo installation but You can directly jump to step 3 if you are in hurry.
Why Free softwares are not recommended? Because the number of good people in this world are very less as compared to the evil ones. Why would Someone who have purchased the software for 140USD would give away for free? Because they have malicious intentions behind that, Nulled forum software’s have back-doors and malicious code that can steal your users data or information. It can infect your server or completely hack your forum. In 3 years of my freelancing career i have worked on many forums that needed malicious code removal, And i realized the issue was just because of using nulled forum software.
So for Secure XenForo installation and configuration AVOID nulled software. If you want to use XenForo for testing purposes, You can send me a private message i will give you access to our dev servers.
Step 2:
You should be having an idea and monetization plans for your forum. Ideally you should create forum about something that you are expert with and you know people would be interested to get involved, Any how this is off topic we will dedicate a complete blog post for this.
Step 3:
Hosting is always considered as an ordinary step. In fact, the future of your forum is based on this. If you have fast and reliable web host, You can forget about the basic issues and problems and focus on your community growth. SO go for a reliable web host that have good support team and reliable servers, This is most important step for Secure XenForo installation and configuration.
Step 4:
When you download XenForo from Customer area. You will get a zip file containing some files and folders which look like thisHere we are talking about XenForo 2, But installation for XF1 is also same as XF2.
First of all you have to check if you server meets the basic XenForo system requirements. For this there are two ways:
1: Manually see your server configuration if you are familiar with Cpanel or SSH. These are basic requirements for XenForo installation
- PHP version: 5.2.11+
- MySQL version: 5.0+
- PHP extensions: MySQLi, GD (with JPEG support), PCRE, SPL, SimpleXML, DOM, JSON, iconv, ctype
- PHP safe_mode = off
2: XenForo makes your life easy and give you a basic system requirements file named as xenforo_requirements.php .
- What you have to do is, After downloading XenForo package from customer area. Unzip the folders and locate xenforo_requirements.php. At this point i expect you have purchased a server and can login there using Cpanel or FTP.
- Upload this file at your server in public_html folder or at the root of your domain.
- Access this file using your domain url like: www.example.com/system_requirements.php. If you have newly purchased this site and Server, But your domain will take time to be mapped here, You can use ip address of your server, or use HOSTS.CX to test your site before it goes live.
- All Set? You will see a notice that tells you the status, Either all requirements are met or something is missing.
Step 5:
Alright your server is OK to host your site now. Now you would need a fresh database where XenForo would create necessary tables.
- If you are using SSH you can simply put commands to create new database for example: CREATE DATABASE xf .
- If you have CPANEL, Simply create a new database and remember the database name and privileged user’s name and credentials. (You will need them in the installation process).
At this point i Expect that you have a good server, A new database created and XenForo package with you.
Step 6:
Now XenForo package joins the action, Locate the folder named as “xf2” (or with the name “upload” for XF1). Compress and upload it at the root of your forum. Once upload is finished you would have to unzip that folder.
- At this point you will have a folder named “xf2” (or “upload” for XF1). go into that folder , Select all files and move them at the root if you want XenForo to work at www.example.com.
- If you want to host XenForo from sub directory change the name of xf2 to “forum” or “community” or “members”. Anything that you like. I have seen most of the people use community or forum or forums or members as name of sub directory.
Step 7:
Now that you have files ready you can simply trigger the installation from browser by visting this url (www.example.com) if you are hosting it from root. Or www.example.com/{foldername}.
Step 8:
XenForo would ask you to mention the name of database, user and his credentials, That you have created in step 4. Enter these credentials in appropriate boxes.
Step 9:
XenForo would create a config file with these details at your server, If that folder is writable. it happens in very rare cases that it will ask you to copy these settings and paste them manually by creating a config.php file in the library.
Step 10:
Now XenForo would like to know about the owner of this website, So simply add the credentials that you would like to use for accessing admin panel and to control awesome features of XenForo.
Congratulations, You have installed XenForo at this point successfully you will be presented with the login screen for admin panel, You can access that now without issues.
If you had any problem while XenForo installation you can write here in the comment. If you are finding for best xenforo hosting companies for your new xenforo forum check it here.
Wait.… You next MOST IMPORTANT step is to configure XenForo properly. I will write a new post about XenForo configuration also very soon. Also i am a freelance xenforo developer and expert with custom addon development.