Installing and Upgrading using Webinstall
Webinstall is a script that allows you to download the SMF package directly to your web server. After downloading the package it will then uncompress the package and direct you to the install or upgrade script as appropriate.
Regardless of whether you are installing a new forum or upgrading an existing one, using webinstall is exactly the same.
Read the requirements
Please make sure to read the requirements before starting.
1) Obtain webinstall
To obtain webinstall simply download it from the download page. The file is small and should download quickly.
2) Upload webinstall to your server
Using FTP or another service upload the webinstall.php file to whatever directory you want your forum to be located at.
3) Point your browser to the webinstall script
Open up your browser and type in the address of the script. For example if you uploaded the file to the directory smf it would look like http://www.your.domain/smf/webinstall.php
4) Select the version and languages
First select the version of SMF you want to install and select the languages you want to be installed at the same time. Please note that languages are tied to specific versions of SMF.
If you are a charter member or have access to other non-public packages you may fill out the login form with your Simple Machines Community Forum account information. This will allow you access to those packages.
5) Fill out the FTP information
If you are prompted to do so, fill out the FTP information so that webinstall can properly download and extract the requested packages.
6) Accept the license
Please make sure to read over the license and if you agree simply check the box
7) Submit and sit back
After submitting the form, the script will do some internal verifications and if nothing is wrong will start downloading the packages. Please note that it will take a little bit of time to download the first package and it may appear that nothing is happening, we assure you there is. So sit back and let webinstall do it's magic.
In order to keep from overloading your server, or from timing out, webinstall will pause between each file it downloads. As long as you have javascript enabled it will resume automatically, otherwise you'll need to click the continue button.
After downloading all the packages it will begin extracting the packages. Just like with downloading, during extraction webinstall will pause between packages.
Once webinstall is done extracting all the packages you will be transfered to the install or upgrade script.
8) Continue on with the appropriate script
If you are installing a forum please continue on with Installing SMF
If you are upgrading a forum please continue on with Beginning the upgrade
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I downloaded the file, but it appears as a zip file and I can't install it to my SMF forums! Please make these more specific because I'm very confused. I don't know how to update my forums, add themes, and anything else that has to do with putting anything on my forums! Please help!