New Installation

These notes describe the steps required to install Simple:Press Forum for the first time.

Start, of course, by downloading the plugin from our Download Page. Simple:Press Forum is not available from the WordPress plugin repository.

Step 1: Upload to your Plugin Folder

Upload the plugin files to your WordPress installation. The ‘simple-forum‘ folder must be copied to your WordPress or WPMU ‘plugins‘ folder.

Simple:Press Forum is a big plugin with a large number of files. Some web based ftp programs may time out and not copy all of the files. For this reason it is best to use an ftp program installed on your PC. We generally offer a ‘minimal’ install version. This can usually be used with the zip file upload tool available within WordPress plugin installation.

Step 2: Activate Simple:Press Forum

Simple:Press Forum should now appear in your plugins list.

Activate the plugin.

Unlike most plugins, activation is only the first step. Nothing is created at this point. Simple:Press Forum requires installation – a process that creates the tables and default data the forum requires.

You may load the install page from the plugin entry by clicking on the ‘Install‘ link. Alternatively, you can navigate to the new ‘Forum‘ menu. This will appear beneath the WordPress ‘comments’ menu. At this point the only menu option available will be to install the plugin.

Step 3: Install

Selecting the menu item will present the installation page. Click on the ‘Install‘ button to start the process. This may take a few minutes. During the install, all of the forum tables are created, the option and setting records are initialized, the WordPress ‘page’ is built that will display the forum and your current registered users (if you have any) will have their forum members data built.

At the conclusion of the install the page will resemble the following illustration.

Please note that it is sometimes not possible for the installation to create the necessary folders that contain the default avatars and smileys.

If this is the case a message will be shown beside phases 6 and 7 that the creation failed.

You will need to create these folders manually and copy the default images into each.

A popup window will appear when you click the ‘Go to forum Admin’ button that will give details of how to do this. Alternatively the same information can be found in the forum’s online help system.