forum-cms

A minimal, SEO-focused forum. Plain PHP + MySQL, no dependencies.

Requirements

• PHP 8.0+
• MySQL 5.7+
• A web host that supports .htaccess (Apache)

Install

1. Download the latest zip and extract it — GitHub wraps everything in a forum-cms-main/ folder, so upload the contents of that folder, not the folder itself
2. Upload all files to your web root (public_html, htdocs, etc.)
3. Visit yoursite.com/install.php
4. Fill in your database credentials, site URL, and admin account — done

install.php deletes itself when finished. config.php is written to the server and never committed to git.

Updates

Updates apply automatically within 24 hours — no action needed. To update immediately, go to Admin → Update Now.

Webhook (optional)

For instant deploys on every push, add a webhook in your GitHub repo settings pointing to yoursite.com/webhook.php with a secret, then set the same secret as webhook_secret in your config.php.