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Installing and Upgrading using Webinstall
Steps for Installing SMF:
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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Comments:
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Hunter made the following comment on December 30, 2008, 09:16:38 PM:

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!   :(

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Jade made the following comment on January 05, 2009, 12:33:05 PM:

You may have downloaded the wrong file by mistake :).

All of the other things you want to do are explained in the documentation here.

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-MwMike- made the following comment on February 19, 2009, 11:38:27 AM:

Despite entering FTP information that works correctly for every other piece of software or web application. That's assuming that I should enter my Host Name in the 'Server' field. I'm guessing that the problem is the port number, as my hosts do not mention that anywhere, so I just have to play around with it.

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Jade made the following comment on February 20, 2009, 12:29:18 AM:

Sorry to hear you're having trouble. Please remember the web install may not work on some servers, regardless of how well other applications and software work on it.

You can upload using the archive if you like. I know cPanel has an extract option in it, which should make it a breeze if your software is updated ;).

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sanpaku made the following comment on March 19, 2009, 02:43:48 PM:

i simply do not understand why this is so bloody difficult to install? I keep getting writable errors and/or 550 path errors despite whichever way i attempt to install (ftp or webinstall)...I am using cuteftp and though i've ne'r had issues before with .sql formats i simply cannot get this to install.  OPEN for suggestions elsewhere to focus on? TIA!

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Jade made the following comment on March 19, 2009, 09:36:41 PM:

Try this, which is pretty close to our new and pending install document: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=275357.msg1888919#msg1888919

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timothy made the following comment on May 05, 2009, 05:24:33 AM:

why did i get this? 500 Internal Server Error. and when i try to upload a new webinstall.php or rename my folder i couldnt still run the installer and still pops the same error.

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Jade made the following comment on May 05, 2009, 06:36:06 PM:

You may have to try a manual install, web install does not work on all servers.

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Archivolt made the following comment on September 22, 2009, 09:09:03 PM:

Is their a way the webinstall can download each file one by one instead of downloading a large zip and decompressing? My file size limit is 500 kb :(

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B made the following comment on January 20, 2010, 11:56:42 AM:

If you only have 500k worth of space, you will not be able to install SMF. If you mean that's all PHP can transfer at one time, then you could try uploading all of the files yourself via FTP instead of using webinstall.

B