This book gives you the power to use phpBB to set up and run your own online discussion forums with ease, and develop your own Internet community. It takes you through the whole process of setting up your phpBB site, and helps you create, customize and manage your own online community with phpBB. Written by experienced phpBB administrators and enthusiasts, the emphasis is on simple, and practical guidance for you to get the most from phpBB. phpBB is a free, open source Internet community application, with outstanding discussion forums and membership management. Written in the PHP scripting language, and making use of the popular MySQL database, phpBB is a standard among web hosting companies throughout the world, and is one of the most widely-used bulletin board packages in the world. phpBB short-circuits the need for you to be a web development master in order to create and manage massive online communities. phpBB handles sites of all sizes, the largest known phpBB-powered site on the Internet handles over 1.5 million members and has 191 million posts to the forums! The book begins with the initial installation and configuration of phpBB on your system, with troubleshooting tips to help you through. You will then go on a tour of phpBB and its features, stepping you through the basic tasks, growing your understanding and familiarizing you with the power of phpBB. Everybody wants their community to look special, and customizing your forum is the next stop in the book. Beginning with a detailed rundown of styles and themes, you will then see how to customize your forum by first modifying existing styles, adding new elements, and even creating a new style from scratch. The book then goes onto cover further administration of your community, creating hacks or "modifications" for phpBB, custom PHP programming with phpBB, and reference appendices with more phpBB resources, the phpBB file and directory structure, guides to the BBCode and permission systems, and the phpBB database structure round off this book.