Congratulations! You have found Fireboard – the best native bulletin board for the award winning Joomla! CMS system. We are going to guide you through the simple downloading and installation process to get your Fireboard forum up and running in no time.

To start you need to have Joomla! installed, this can be found on the joomla site, currently the latest stable version available is 1.013 and this is the version we recommend for security reasons, if you dont have Joomla! already installed do it now.

Ok now you have Joomla! installed you need to go ahead and grab the files from the Fireboard remository, this is found herejoomlacode.org/gf/download/frsrelease/54...1.0.3_UnzipFirst.zip, you will be downloading 1.03 which is the first stable release of fireboard, if you are reading this tutorial and a newer stable release has become available please download the latest version.

* Please note that the fireboard component is a packed archive and to use this must first be unpacked using winzip or similar*

If you are new to Joomla! it is worth reading the documentation relating to Joomla! itself to get yourself acquainted, the documentation is found HERE help.joomla.org

Before you begin please make sure that if you are performing a clean install you follow the instructions HERE
If on the other hand you are upgrading from Joomlaboard or a previous version of Fireboard, please follow the upgrade instructions

Fireboard installs as simply as other Joomla! components so now you have your file go into your Joomla! backend (yoursite/administrator) and locate the installers link on the top menu. From the installers menu you will see a dropdown menu appear when you hover over it, if you scan down you will see the menu item 'components' this is the link you need to choose, so lets go ahead and click that link.

That will now take you to the installers page where you can choose your software to install, as I said this is no different from any other Joomla! component so click the browse tab and locate your recently downloaded Fireboard component. * This will most likely be in the file named : Fireboard_Forum_1.0.3_UnzipFirst *

Ok, still with me?? Good!

Next all there is to do is click the Upload file and install button and Fireboard will begin automatically uploading to your Joomla! installation, if all is well you will be met with a success message with a continue link underneath, click continue to – well – err – continue…

So there you have it, a simple download and install for your new Fireboard forum, next we will deal with configuration.
Configuration

Configuring your fireboard is where the fun begins, you really get to play with your forum, adding and removing categories, user ranks and a whole host of other nice gadgets and gizmo's. To start this process we must first finalise the installation process by letting Fireboard install the necessary database. If at this stage you are upgrading from Joomlaboard or an earlier version of Fireboard please see the Upgrading section.

If on the other hand you have a clean installation of Fireboard we will continue on this page, first things first you need to go into the fireboard component located at:
components > fireboard forum - once you have entered the Fireboard component you will be met with the following screen

To complete the installation you simply need to click the Apply! button underneath Clean Installation, this will now upload the neccessary database files for your Fireboard installation.

On successful install you will now be met with:

Click continue to be redirected to the Fireboard Control Panel - you are now free to configure Fireboard how you like.