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Installing and Configuring vBulletin

In this chapter we begin at the point where most people begin with vBulletin—with a copy of the software and somewhere to upload it to. If you have both of those, then you are probably eager to get going with the installation!

We will look at:

•The requirements of vBulletin

•How to install the files

•How to create the database

•How to troubleshoot installation problems

•How to configure vBulletin

•How to administer the default usergroups

•How to secure vBulletin

•How to get help and support

Requirements

The requirements to run vBulletin are pretty straightforward, and even the basic shared hosting available nowadays for a few dollars a month should allow you to upload, install, configure, and run vBulletin.

Basic requirements are:

•MySQL database support

•PHP support

If your host claims to support these, then you have a good chance of being able to run vBulletin. Now you need to look in a little more detail at what your host offers.

Installing and Configuring vBulletin

Detailed requirements for vBulletin are:

•PHP 4.0.6 (latest version recommended to reduce security loopholes, improve performance, and maintain best compatibility with future upgrades)

•MySQL 3.23.33 minimum (4.0.16 or later recommended)

•Operating system: BSD, Solaris, Linux, Windows

Disk Space

Disk space is an important consideration. By 'disk space' I mean the amount of space you are given on the server to host your site and the associated databases.

Disk space is a requirement that is harder to predict. Initially, you will be able to get away with a small amount of space, say 50 Mb. However, over time, the posts in your forum will add significantly to this. All you can do is estimate how busy your forum will be and judge how much space you need from that.

For example, if you think that your forum will generate about 100 posts a day, then that's 36,500 posts a year. On average, this number of posts will take up about 75 Mb of room. If you think that your discussion board will generate 200 posts a day, then you'll need at least 150 Mb of space. 400 posts a day means 146,000 posts a year and an approximate disk consumption of around 300 Mb.

Points to note about disk space

Remember that these figures are average figures. If your site regularly has large posts (in terms of text content) or users are able to attach a lot of attachments to posts, then these figures could rise significantly.

Another point to note is that posts are stored in the database. Different hosts handle disk space versus database space differently, so make sure you know in advance how much disk space and database space you have.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the amount of data transfer that your site has. Each time a page is called up by a browser, data extracted from a database or an image retrieved, this adds to your site's bandwidth usage.

For convenience, almost all hosts measure bandwidth over a period of a month in megabytes or gigabytes, so one hosting plan might give you 100 Mb of monthly bandwidth while another might give you 50 Gb. The more bandwidth you have, the more you usually pay and the more room your site has to expand.

Judging how much bandwidth a discussion board will need is tricky for a number of reasons. Yes, it depends on the number of users and the number of posts made, but it also depends on other, harder-to-measure factors. These include:

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