How Much Time To Set Up 'Typical' phpBB?

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2003 2:34 am (21 years ago)

I had someone ask me not long ago about doing a group of projects as a package deal, and one part of it was installing a phpBB. I honestly confessed I'd never done one before, so my interest in doing the whole package was limited. Eventually was told that someone else had been found for the job, but now I'm naturally wondering how good of a deal I might've missed out on. Wink

About how many hours would it typically take to set up a phpBB for both a newbie and for someone already experienced?

If you have to make a lot of assumptions about either the project or the experience level of the developer, feel free to spell some of them out. I'm wondering for example what kind of parameters you'd typically ask about. Number of users? Load? Scalability? And is there even a 'typical' phpBB project to begin with? (the one I was asked about didn't come with any parameters at all -- is that good?)

My Musical Preferences · Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2003 7:37 am (21 years ago)

I guess I was lucky that no problems cropped up on install and following the instructions I had my very first phpBB up and running in 30mins and ready to accept visitors. Now this was with a bog standard board with no modifications. This can be done by a novice user.

If you're talking modifications to integrate into a site be it template changes or even just colour changes then you can change this to hours or more likely days to get it perfect. This really needs to be done by someone who is at least conversant in HTML as that is all the templates consist of for layout etc. Knowledge of CSS would be handy for changing colours.

Quote:

I'm wondering for example what kind of parameters you'd typically ask about. Number of users? Load? Scalability? And is there even a 'typical' phpBB project to begin with? (the one I was asked about didn't come with any parameters at all -- is that good?)

I'd say yes ask about users and how they think they are going to use the board. You can then try and work out if the board is going to be really busy and then ask questions of other people running boards to find out about db size and bandwidth usage as it really varies with the size and usage of board.

My board for example has 104 users but I'd say only 10-15 were regular users and the others just pop on now and again, this board for example would use a lot more bandwidth than mine I would guess and I am typically way under my 1gb bandwidth limit for the month.

WebHelper Joined: 01 Mar 2003 Posts: 69 Location: Texas

It took me 25 minutes to make my first post. And 22 minutes of that was downloading the code from phpbb.com and uploading it to my host. Wink

It's really a very simple install.

That's if you want to run the standard template, with no modifications. If you want to do anything different as far as the way the board looks, you really have to learn the template system. To change the functionality, you need to learn php and the table structure. On my main forum I've changed the header and footer (left the main body with fairly standard subSilver stuff). I've added mods from various sources, and written / customized a bunch of code myself. So I have substantially more than 25 minutes invested at this time.

But a plain vanilla board? Takes very little time to set up.

Dave

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Yeah, I can confirm what Dave said; it takes very little time to install. I have copies of most versions of phpBB on my hard disk, so there's no downloading time Smile

. Basically it takes me 2 minutes to install it without counting uploading all the files, which is the main time expenditure.

I honestly have to say that phpBB requires very little time to set up - the installation script does everything. But then customisation is a whole other game Very Happy

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Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2003 2:55 am (21 years ago)

Thanks all Smile

That's really a lot easier than I was estimating it in my head (using plenty of fudge, of course Wink

).

I guess such an easy install's just another reason it's an award-winning product.

Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2003 5:29 pm (21 years ago)

I'd agree. Its a very simple install. Even doing the avitars only took me 10 mins and 8 of that was upload.

On the whole a very easy board to set up and maintain

YAY