Category Archives: phpBB

Today has updated the phpBB 3.1.8 forum to phpBB 3.1.9 with the automatic service pack.

Below I will describe the order of actions for the update:

1) Let’s make a backup copy of the files and the forum base.
In Linux, you can do this with commands:

sudo tar -cvjf backup_forum_files.tar.bz2 /var/www/forum/
mysqldump -u USER -h localhost -p BASE | gzip -c > backup_forum_base.sql.gz

2) Now you need to download the archive with the service pack “https://www.phpbb.com/downloads/#update”.

3) Unpack from the archive only install/ and vendor/ in the directory with the forum. If the install folder is located in the directory with the forum, it automatically turns off, that is, no one on it will not write and walk.
If the files were moved from the terminal, then the rights of the owner from which they moved could be set and the web server can not access them, so let’s specify the group and owner from which the web north is working:

sudo chown -R user:user /var/www/forum/install/
sudo chown -R user:user /var/www/forum/vendor/

4) Open the browser link to the forum by adding install to it, for example http://example.com/forum/install/.
Now it’s time to press Update and follow the instructions.

If you made changes in the code of some files and they are affected by the update, you will be informed about this and offered to choose which version of the files to leave, in my opinion it is better to put the new version from the update, and then make the changes after the update by comparing both files for example in Notepad++ with using the plugin Notepad++ Compare plugin which shows the differences in the code of files.

Did somehow a great logo in the header of the forum phpBB and of course the name of the site and the description was imposed on it and prevented.
To hide the site name and description in the directory of the active theme (style), find the file /style/stylename/template/overall_header.html

Open it in a text editor and find the following two lines in it:

<h1>{SITENAME}</h1>
<p>{SITE_DESCRIPTION}</p>

Just they are responsible for displaying the site name and description in the forum header, we will not delete them, they will come in handy, but simply comment:

<!-- <h1>{SITENAME}</h1>
<p>{SITE_DESCRIPTION}</p> -->

After that, clear the forum cache by clicking the button in the administrator’s pane.

Done.

Updated recently phpBB 3.0.12 to 3.1.8, auto update here does not help, so I will describe the procedure for updating the items:

1) Be sure to make a backup copy of the files and the database of the forum. We will make the standard topic prosilver, disable the rest of the styles and modules, as they will not work on the new version of phpBB.

2) Download the archive with the new version of phpBB from the official site “https://www.phpbb.com/downloads/”.

3) On the server, delete all the files and folders of the forum except the file config.php and directories images, files, store.

4) Unpack the downloaded archive, delete the file config.php and directories images, files, store. Move the rest of the files to the server.

5) In the browser, open the forum address by specifying a database update script, for example http://FORUM/install/database_update.php and following the instructions, perform the update.
At this point, I had an error:

PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught exception 'Twig_Error_Loader' with message 'Unable to find template "login_body.html" ...
...

I suspect that the information in the database in the phpbb_migrations table did not allow the script to fully update. So I solved the problem by restoring the old forum base by clearing this phpbb_migrations table via phpMyAdmin or by sql query:

TRUNCATE TABLE phpbb_migrations

And again running the database update script http://FORUM/install/database_update.php, which this time performed the update correctly.

At the end of the update, remove the install directory and clear the cache via the administration panel of the forum. Done.

See also:
Solution of error “A module already exists” and “The installer detected a timeout” when updating phpBB