To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [permaculture] phpBB and what was the Permaculture geeks mailing list address?
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:52:50 -0400
A couple years ago there was a mailing list for permaculture geeky folk
but I lost track of it. Anybody remember?
I put a poll on the website asking for recommendations.
Consistently people asked for a forum.
So, I downloaded phpBB ("the most widely-used bulletin board package in
the world"), unzipped it, and uploaded it with Dreamweaver MX's FTP.
The directions in the online manual said:
decompress the phpBB 2.0 archive to a local directory on your
system. From there you must FTP all the files it contains (being
sure to retain the directory structure) to your host. All .php,
.inc, .sql, .cfg, .htm and .tpl files should be uploaded in ASCII
mode, while all graphics should use binary mode.
I didn't know what binary and ASCI meant so I looked it up and was
informed that:
Dreamweaver 3 and higher transfer files in ASCII or binary mode
automatically, depending on the file type.
So, no problem, I thought. I followed these instructions:
Once all the files have been uploaded to your site you should point
your browser to this location, eg. http://www.mysite.tld/phpBB2
OK, did that and got the following:
Firefox can't find the server at www.permacultureactivist.net.tld.
A little further down the manual page was:
Before proceeding with installation you should ensure you have a
database available.
I said, Huh? WTF does that mean? I then learned that my web hosting
service doesn't provide MySQL database support unless I pay an extra $10
a month. (I'm basically working with NO budget here.)
So I tried the previous procedure with another webhost that includes
MySQL support for a different site and got the same "Firefox can't find
the server".
I may need to study some books. Any recommendations?