Installing Xiuno BBS 4.0.4 — Step by Step

This guide walks you through a fresh installation on a Linux server running Nginx + PHP 8.x + MySQL/MariaDB.

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1. System Requirements

| Component | Minimum | Recommended |

|---|---|---|

| PHP | 7.4 | 8.2 or 8.3 |

| MySQL | 5.6 | 8.0 / MariaDB 10.6 |

| Web server | Apache / Nginx | Nginx |

| Disk space | 50 MB | 500 MB+ |

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2. Download Xiuno BBS

cd /var/www/html
wget https://xiuno.wiki/downloads/releases/xiuno-bbs-4.0.4.zip
unzip xiuno-bbs-4.0.4.zip

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3. Set File Permissions

chown -R www-data:www-data .
chmod 755 upload/ tmp/ log/ conf/

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4. Create the Database

CREATE DATABASE xiuno CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci;
CREATE USER 'xiuno'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_strong_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON xiuno.* TO 'xiuno'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

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5. Configure Nginx

Add this inside your Nginx server block:

root /var/www/html;
index forum.php index.html;

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /forum.php?$args;
}

location ~ \.php$ {
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}

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6. Run the Web Installer

Open your browser and go to http://yourdomain.com/install/ and follow the on-screen steps:

1. Enter database host, name, user, and password
2. Set your admin username and email
3. Click Install — all tables are created automatically
4. Delete or rename the install/ directory after completion

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Troubleshooting

White/blank page? Set define('DEBUG', 1) near the top of forum.php to see PHP errors.

500 error? Check your PHP error log: tail -f /var/log/php8.2-fpm.log

404 on all pages? Your Nginx try_files rule is missing — check step 5 above.

Post below if you run into any issue!