1. What you need before starting

• SSH or FTP access to your server
• PHP 8.5 or newer
• Apache 2.4 or newer (with mod_rewrite)
• MariaDB 10.6+ or MySQL 8.0+
• An empty database created
• A domain pointing to the server

2. System requirements

PHP version and extensions

Required PHP extensions

Check PHP extensions:

php -m | grep -E "pdo_mysql|mbstring|gd|imagick|curl|zip|fileinfo|json|openssl|intl"

3. Download APBoard

Download the current release ZIP from GitLab:

Releases on GitLab

Choose the latest release and download the ZIP. Make sure to take the release ZIP (not the source code download) – the release ZIP contains all required Composer dependencies.

4. Upload files

Option A: Via SFTP (shared hosting / simple)

Use an SFTP program like FileZilla or Cyberduck:

1. Connect to your server via SFTP (host, username, password / SSH key)
2. Navigate to the web root of your server (often /var/www/html/, /htdocs/ or /public_html/)
3. Create a new folder there, e.g. forum/
4. Unzip the ZIP locally and upload the files to the forum/ folder

Option B: Via SSH (recommended for root servers)

ssh root@YOUR-SERVER-IP
mkdir -p /var/www/forum
cd /tmp
wget https://gitlab.apboard.de/app/apboard3/-/releases/permalink/latest/downloads/apboard3-release.zip
unzip apboard3-release.zip -d /var/www/forum

5. Create database

Option A: Via MySQL command line

mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE apboard CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'apboard'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'secure-password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON apboard.* TO 'apboard'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Option B: Via phpMyAdmin (shared hosting)

1. Open phpMyAdmin (usually accessible via the hosting control panel)
2. Click on Databases
3. Enter a name (e.g. apboard), choose utf8mb4_unicode_ci as collation
4. Click Create
5. Create a database user with all rights on this database in the hosting panel

6. Configure Apache

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/forum.my-domain.com.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName forum.my-domain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/forum/public

    <Directory /var/www/forum/public>
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
        Options -Indexes
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/forum-error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/forum-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

sudo a2ensite forum.my-domain.com.conf
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl reload apache2

# HTTPS with Certbot:
sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache
sudo certbot --apache -d forum.my-domain.com

7. Set file permissions

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/forum
sudo find /var/www/forum -type f -exec chmod 644  \;
sudo find /var/www/forum -type d -exec chmod 755  \;
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/forum/storage
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/forum/bootstrap/cache

8. Run the web installer

APBoard has a graphical web installer. Open in your browser: https://forum.my-domain.com/install

The installer checks PHP extensions and directory permissions, then guides you through database connection, admin account setup and forum configuration.