Install phpBB on VPS Debian 7 and 8 32 and 64 Bit – In this tutorial we will show you how to install phpBB on your Debian VPS. phpBB is a forum package written in the PHP scripting language, easy to use, powerful, and highly customizable. The name “phpBB” is an abbreviation of PHP Bulletin Board. PhpBB features include support for multiple database engines (MySQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL, Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server), the flat message structure (as opposed to the screw), hierarchical, subforum topic split/combine/lock, user groups, multiple attachments per post, full text search, plugins and various options notification (e-mail, Jabber instant messaging, ATOM feed).

Before you start the installation, make sure that you have LAMP installed on your server. If not, follow a very good tutorial on how to set up a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MariaDB, PHP) stack on Debian VPS.
- The TERMS We will be using Linux VPS hosting plans for this tutorial. SYSTEM UPDATE Log into your server as root user ‘ and make sure your Debian VPS 7 and use the latest updates.
# ssh root@hostname
# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y
2. INSTALL phpBB. The version of the time of writing this tutorial is phpBB 3.1.2. You can check that from their website. To download phpBB to the opt directory by issuing the following command:
# cd /opt
# wget –no-check-certificate https://download.phpbb.com/pub/release/3.1/3.1.2/phpBB-3.1.2.zip
3. After the download is complete, extract the file.
# unzip phpBB-3.1.2.zip
4. Let’s copy the installation file to your Apache document root:
# cp -R phpBB3/* /var/www/
5. PROPERLY SETTING PERMISSIONS AND DIRECTORY FILES. Enter the Apache document root:
# cd /var/www/
6. With the command below we will set the file permissions required:
# for files in config.php cache files store images/avatars/upload/; do chmod 777 $files; done
7. CREATE A MYSQL DATABASE. The next thing we need to do is to create a MySQL database for phpBB. Enter MySQL as root and create the necessary database:
# mysql -u root -p
mysql> CREATE DATABASE phpbb;
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on phpbb.* TO ‘phpbbuser’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘your_password’;
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit;
You can now complete Your phpBB installation with open your favorite web browser and navigate to: http://ipaddress/install. Enter the required database credentials such as the database name, database username to another. You will see a successful database connection. Then, setup and admin username and password on the following steps if you have setup a custom SMTP server settings for your email.
8. After completing installation it is recommended to delete the installation directory in your document root of Apache:
# rm -rf /var/www/install
Done….
Instead of manual installation it would be much quicker to use PaaS like Cloudways to install PHPBB on Debian based hosting. Manual installation would take a lot of time since you will have manually install OS and each and every packages.