Installation

This document has been superseded by this newer one and will be removed shortly.

Part of your licensing benefits means that one of our support agents will install your software at no extra charge. If you would like to take advantage of this, simply submit a support request in the client area.
For those who wish to perform the installation themselves, this guide will take you through the process.
Note: if you have purchased an IPS Hosted Community a request would have already been sent to our support agents asking them to install the software. They'll send you an Email when it's done.

Step One: Requirements
Before installing, you need to make sure that your hosting environment meets the software requirements. If you are an IPS Hosting Customer, you will definitely have the requirements you need.
Our requirements are listed here and from that page you can also download a script which will check if your server meets the requirements.
If you're not sure if your sever meets the requirements, or you need any of the requirements explained, simply submit a support request and a support agent will be happy to advise you.

Step Two: Downloading
You can download your software from the client area. Once logged in, select "Purchases" from the left-side menu and download the latest version of each piece of software you're installing (if you're just installing just IP.Board, you'll only need that, but if you also purchased IP.Gallery for example, you need to download that separately).
Once downloaded, unzip the packages using an unarchiver program. One unzipped, the package should contain at least an "upload" folder, and possibly "Documentation" and/or "Tools", depending which package you're looking at.

Step Three: Uploading
For this step, you will need an FTP program (a free cross-platform one is Filezilla) if you don't already have one, and the FTP credentials for your server (your hosting provider will be able to provide these for you if you don't know them).
If you haven't done so already, create a new directory on your server named appropriately. If you wanted to access the forums via 'http://www.domain.com/forums/' create a directory called 'forums' in the webroot directory.
The "webroot" directory is usually 'public_html' or 'www', but this varies from server to server so if you're unsure, contact your hosting provider.
Using your FTP client, you can now move into the directory you wish to upload to (in the example above, we would move into the newly created 'forums' directory) and upload the the contents of the "upload" folder in the zip archive you downloaded. This is usually done by simply selecting all the files from upload folder, and dragging them into your FTP client window.
If you are installing more than one piece of software (for example, IP.Gallery in addition to IP.Board) you should also upload the contents of their "upload" folders to the same destination.


The upload process is likely to take some time.
Once you have finished uploading the files, you need to rename "conf_global.dist.php" to "conf_global.php".
You should then CHMOD the files and directories as indicated by our CHMOD guide.
Note: If you are using the MSSQL database driver instead of the MySQL database driver, you should download and upload that in the same manner as one of the other packages.

Step Four: Installing

You should now run the installer file through your web browser by entering the URL to it into your browser address bar (if you have followed our example, type in domain.com/forums/admin/install, naturally subsituting 'domain.com' for your web address).
If there are any issues with the server set up, files or CHMOD values of your files, you'll be presented with warnings here to correct those before proceeding. Any issues that are found here will normally require you to correct those before installation can occur, otherwise, follow the onscreen instructions.
When you get to the form asking where you would like your IP.Board installed to, you can usually leave the values as they are.
When you get to the database form your SQL username and password, and the name of an empty database, if you do not this information, your hosting provider will be able to assist - in most cases it is different from the FTP log in information. You can usually leave host as "localhost" and the table prefix blank.
When asked for your administrator login information, simply enter the information you would like to login to your community and the Administration Control Panel ("Admin CP").
Once the installer is finished, follow the link and to log into your newly installed community with the information you set for your administrator account. Once you are logged into the board, you can click on the "Admin CP" link found in the navigation bar to access the Administration Control Panel.



Installing Addon Applications

After the main installation, should you wish to install an application such as IP.Gallery or IP.Blog onto an existing community, follow the instructions above up to step 4.
Instead of going to domain.com/forums/admin/install to complete the installation process, you should go to your Admin CP, and under the "System" tab select "Manage Applications and Modules".
You will notice a table listing uninstalled applications, and a link to install your application, click the install link and the installation process will begin.