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YaBB Quick Start Guide

## Before Installing

Before you can begin installing YaBB, there are a few basic things you must know: CHMOD (file permissions), FTP client usage, and uploading files in ASCII and binary mode. While not required, it would also be useful to have a basic understanding of Perl and HTML.

### Requirements

1. The first thing you need is a website host that supports Perl 5.8+, has a minimum of 15mb+* free disk space on your web hosting account, and an e-mail server such as SMTP or sendmail. Free and extremely low cost hosts frequently do not have these features or place severe restrictions on hosting forum software. For a list of hosts that do, check the YaBB Chat and Support Community. Most hosts' FAQ pages will say if they do or do not.
2. So now that you've got a host, you'll need to get a File Archive Utility (such as 7-zip for Windows ) for manipulating file archives e.g. .zip, .tar, .gz, .bz2. You will also need a FTP client. FTP clients allow you to connect to the FTP server that your host provides. Through the FTP server, you will install YaBB. For Windows users, we recommend the free, open source FileZilla, WS_FTP LE. For a comparison list of FTP clients, please view this Wikipedia article or similar sites such as File Transfer Downloads on FileHippo to download a client for your system. Now that you have an FTP client, familiarize yourself with ASCII and Binary transfer modes. Some hosts also have 'built-in' File Transfer/Management Utilities that can be used to upload your files.
3. The only thing left to learn about is file permissions, or CHMOD. CHMOD (CHange MODe) is a process that only Unix, Linux, and other *nix web hosts support; if your host does not say that it's a Windows host, then it's probably one of these. This sets permissions on files. These permissions include reading, writing, and executing. You use your FTP client to CHMOD, and how you do so in every client is slightly different. In many of them, all you have to do is right-click on a file, select "CHMOD" or "Set File Permissions," and then input the CHMOD number or choose the proper check boxes.
4. Verify that you have the following: FTP client, web hosting account, a text editor (NOT word for Windows), and a web browser.

*Note: if you already have a YaBB forum and plan to convert that forum to 2.7, you will need approximately 3 times the space of your original forum for the conversion utility's conversion files. Once the conversions are finished and verified, these extra files can and should be be removed.