Database Configuration
First of all, you must have MySQL or PostgreSQL installed and properly configured. HSQLDB is supported as well, and has built-in support, so you don't need to download it (eg, it is an embedded database).
Open the file WEB-INF/config/SystemGlobals.properties. Now search for a key named database.driver.name and configure it according to the following table:
Database key Value
MySQL mysql
PostgeSQL postgresql
HSQLDB hsqldb
Key: database.driver.name
The default value is mysql, which means JForum will try to use MySQL. Note that the value should be in lowercase.
Next, you can tell JForum whether to use a Connection Pool or not. A connection pool will increase the performance of your application, but there are some situations where the use of a connection pool is not recommended or even possible, so you can change it according to your needs.
By default JForum uses a connection pool, option which is specified by the key database.connection.implementation. The following table shows the possible values for this key:
Connection Storage Type key Value
Pooled Connections net.jforum.PooledConnection
Simple Connections net.jforum.SimpleConnection
DataSource Connections net.jforum.DataSourceConnection
Key: database.connection.implementation
If you have chosen net.jforum.DataSourceConnection, then set the name of the datasource in key database.datasource.name, and ignore the table below. Otherwise, do the following steps:
Edit the file WEB-INF/config/database/<DBNAME>/<DBNAME>.properties, where <DBNAME> is the database name you are using - for instance, mysql, postgresql or hsqldb. In this file there are some options you should change, according to the table below:
Key Name key Value description
database.connection.username Database username
database.connection.password Database password
database.connection.host The host where the database is located
dbname The database name. The default value is jforum. All JForum tables are preceded by "jforum_", so you don't need to worry about conflicting table names.
File: WEB-INF/config/database/<DBNAME>/<DBNAME>.properties
The other properties you may leave with the default values if you don't know what to put.
Note for MySQL users
If you're going to use MySQL 4.1 or newer, please pay attention to the fact that starting from this version (the mysql version, not JForum) many architectural changes were made. By default, now the system runs using the UTF-8 character set (previous versions lack support for it), and it may result in some problems depending the way you configured JForum to connect to MySQL. Regular installations will opt to use unicode and UTF-8 as character encoding, but, when using MySQL 4.1+, you shoudl avoid id.
To do that, open the file mysql.properties and change the value of the keys "mysql.encoding" and "mysql.unicode" to empty (eg, mysql.unicode= ).
Creating the database tables
The next step is to create the tables. To do that, use the import script named "<DBNAME>_db_struct.sql", placed at WEB-INF/config/database/<DBNAME>. This script will create all necessary tables to run JForum. The script were tested and should work with no problem at all.
Also, please keep in mind that if you are upgrading JForum you need to take a look to see if a migration script exists. Look in the file named "Readme.txt" in the root directory to see.
Populating the tables
Now it is time to run the script to populate the database tables. To do that, use the script named "<DBNAME>_data_dump.sql", also located at WEB-INF/config/database/<DBNAME>. One more time, you should have no problems with this step. If you do, please remember to inform the error message, as well the database name and version you're using.
Renaming files
Now, look for a file named new_rename.htm in the root directoy. If it exists, rename it to index.htm (delete the existing index.htm first). This will make browsers to be wwwected to the forum when acessing the context path's root.
Security Information and Considerations
# Remove the line "install = net.jforum.view.install.InstallAction" from the file WEB-INF/config/modulesMapping.properties
# JForum uses a servlet mapping to invoke the pages. This mapping is *.page, and is already properly configured at WEB-INF/web.xml. If you are running JForum on a ISPs which have Apache HTTPD in front of Tomcat, you may need to contact their Technical Support and ask them to explicity enable the mapping for you.
# The directory "images", "tmp" and "WEB-INF" ( e its sub-directories ) should have write permission to the user who runs the web server. You'll get nasty exceptions if there is no write permission. In the same way, if you're going to use the file attachments support, the directoy you'd chosen to store the files ("uploads" by default) should also be writable.
# The administration interface is accessible via the link Admin Control Panel, located in the bottom of the main page. You will only see this link if you are logged as Administrator. See above the default password for the admin user:
The username is Admin and the password is admin
# This step is HIGHLY recommended: Open the file WEB-INF/config/SystemGlobals.properties and search for a key named user.hash.sequence. There is already a default value to the key, but is VERY RECOMMENDED that you change the value. It may be anything, and you won't need to remember the value. You can just change one or other char, insert some more... just type there some numbers and random characters, and then save the file. This value will be used to enhance the security of your JForum installation, and you will just need to do this step once.