Vanilla Forum

By Joe Gardiner Wednesday, 28th April 2010

What you will need:

All the information from you vCluster Details page and Database Settings page. This includes: access server, public IP, database server, username, database name (the same as your username), and your database password. For quick reference during the Vanilla install, you may find it useful to copy these details into a text file.

The newest version of Vanilla, available to download from http://vanillaforums.org/

A file extractor that is compatible with the .zip format. OSX and Windows handle this format natively.

An FTP program. You can use a program like FileZilla, or if you use Firefox web browser, there is an FTP add on available called Fire FTP. If your not sure which client to use have a look at this article.

A text editor. Notepad or Text Edit will both be fine.

A web browser. We like Firefox.

The official Vanilla install guide can be found at http://vanillaforums.org/page/InstallationInstructions

Extracting Vanilla

Unzip your downloaded Vanilla install to a folder on your desktop.

Uploading

To upload Vanilla Forum files to the root directory of your vCluster follow the FTP upload guide.

To upload Vanilla Forum files to a sub-domain on your vCluster follow the vHosting guide.

Installing Vanilla

Now we’re going to install Vanilla using your web browser. Fire it up and navigate to the directory name we just created: vanilla.username.group.vc.catn.com/

On this page you decide whether you want to install or upgrade. As we are starting from scratch, you want to choose the install option.

This next screen just tells you that its going to check it can install Vanilla on your server. Click the link to proceed.

On this next step you have to enter in the database settings, these can be found in your CatN settings.

This stage is for setting up the forum settings. The admin access, support contact and forum name are all configured here. Enter in the desired settings and click complete the setup.

You are then congratulated with a page telling you that everything has been set up and installed correctly. Then you can click on sign in you will be able to access the control panel.