This tutorial is part of the Install scripts that are present in fantastico tutorials category

SMF is written in the popular language PHP and uses a MySQL database. It is designed to provide you with all the features you need from a bulletin board while having an absolute minimal impact on the resources of the server. SMF is the next generation of forum software - and best of all it is and will always remain completely free!

Main Website: http://simplemachines.org/

Demo Website: http://demo.opensourcecms.com/smf/

Support forums: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/

Installation

Step 1: Head over to SMF download center and download the latest release of the forum software.

Step 2: Extract the contents of the archive and upload the content of the archive to your webserver using a FTP client like SmartFTP

Step 3: Go to phpMyadmin or use any database management script to create a new empty database.

Step 4: Chmod the current files to 0777:

• attachments
• avatars
• Packages
• Packages/installed.list
• Smileys
• Themes
• agreement.txt
• Settings.php
• Settings_bak.php

You can try using the installer to chmod your files, otherwise you will have to do it manually:

Step 5: Go to the installer page www.yoursite.com/install.php and fill in the requested data there

There’s not much that I can add here, because the installer provides all necessary guidelines. Make sure you tick the “Use UTF-8 charset” tickbox.

Step 6: After pressing the proceed button the installer will create the necessary tables and you will be taken to the Admin account setup page where you will setup your admin account.

That’s it SMF is installed on your web server! Now you have to chmod settings.php back to 644 and delete the install.php file after which you can start managing your new forum by logging in to the Admin panel!