Congratulations on choosing to install a Discus board on your site. Please follow the detailed instructions below, and you should have Discus installed in under a half hour. Before you begin, though, please review this list of the software you'll need:

• A program to decompress files. If you do not have such a program, we recommend the latest version of WinZip.

• An FTP client program. If you do not have such a program, we suggest WS_FTP for PC users and Fetch for Macintosh users.

Please follow these instructions to complete the installation of Discus on your web server. If you need technical support because these steps do not work, please click here.

1. Extract the Archive

   Decompress the archive using WinZip, PKZip, or a similar program into any folder on your system. Be sure that you preserve the archived subdirectory structure because uploading files to your server will be much easier if you do. Fortunately, preserving the subdirectory structure is the default behavior of many programs, and most can be configured to do so (consult your program's documentation for more information).

2. Log into your FTP Server

   Use your FTP client to log into your FTP server using your username and password.

3. Create Directories and Set Permissions

   Using your FTP program, create the following directories on your server. Then, after you have created the directory, change permissions on the directories themselves as instructed.

   • /home/httpd/orgthread_admin_17639467
     Set permissions: 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

   • /home/httpd/orgthread_admin_17639467/source
     Set permissions: 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

   • /home/httpd/html/orgthread
     Set permissions: 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

   • /home/httpd/html/orgthread/icons
     Set permissions: 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

   • /home/httpd/html/orgthread/icons/noframes
     Set permissions: 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

   • /home/httpd/html/orgthread/clipart
     Set permissions: 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

   • /home/httpd/html/orgthread/messages
     Set permissions: 0777 (rwxrwxrwx)

   • /home/httpd/cgi-bin/orgthread
     Set permissions: 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

4. Upload Files and Set Permissions

   Using your FTP program, transfer the indicated files from your local machine to your server. Then, after you have created the directory, change permissions on the files as instructed.

   • Upload all files from the "admin_files" directory into /home/httpd/orgthread_admin_17639467 in ASCII mode.

     Set permissions on all files to 0777 (rwxrwxrwx) ^{[Note 1]}

   • Upload all files from the "admin_files/source" directory into /home/httpd/orgthread_admin_17639467/source in ASCII mode.

     Set permissions on all files to 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

   • Upload all files from the "html_files" directory into /home/httpd/html/orgthread in ASCII mode.

     Set permissions on all files to 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

   • Upload all files from the "html_files/icons" directory into /home/httpd/html/orgthread/icons in BINARY mode.

     Set permissions on all files to 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

   • Upload all files from the "html_files/icons/noframes" directory into /home/httpd/html/orgthread/icons/noframes in BINARY mode.

     Set permissions on all files to 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

   • Upload all files from the "html_files/clipart" directory into /home/httpd/html/orgthread/clipart in BINARY mode.

     Set permissions on all files to 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

   • Upload the file from the "html_files/messages" directory into /home/httpd/html/orgthread/messages in ASCII mode.

     Set permissions on the file to 0777 (rwxrwxrwx)

   • Upload the files from the "script_files" directory into /home/httpd/cgi-bin/orgthread in ASCII mode.

     Set permissions on the files to 0755 (rwxr-xr-x)

5. Access your Board

   Congratulations, you have set up Discus on your site! You can access your board at the following URL: http://209.76.109.186/html/orgthread. You should see the Discus frame set (frames setup) or the topics page (no frames setup).

   The first thing to do is to set your administration password. Click the Administration link from your board. For your username, enter admin. Leave the password blank. Click the "Log In" button. You will be instructed to set your initial password.

   We highly recommend the Superuser Getting Started Tutorial which is distributed with Discus and is now installed on your site. Please read through that tutorial and the other administration instructions to learn how to use Discus.

6. Purchase Discus Pro (optional)

   Discus Pro is available for only $99.00 and includes many features not included in the freeware version, including:

   • Private reading topics (password required to read discussions)
   • User self-registration (automatic, queued, or e-mail verified)
   • Automatic archiving and pruning by conversation length
   • Manual archiving and pruning by date
   • Message editing (users edit own messages within 30 minutes)
   • Message queueing (messages approved by moderators)
   • Backup and restore built in (reads and writes unix tar format)
   • Attachment uploading (documents, text files, binaries)
   • Cookie-based login (optional; selectable by users)
   • E-mail notification enhancements (selectable by subtopic or replies)
   • Enhanced user profiles (picture, personal information)
   • IP options (IP banning, IP-based authentication)
   • Log analysis tools (posting log and NCSA format server log)
   • Preferences of users stored to control board options

   Once the freeware version is working properly, if you would like to order Discus Pro for your site, you can upgrade to Discus Pro quickly and easily. Visit our ordering page to buy now or the Discus Pro home page for more information.

7. FTP Survey (optional)

   To help us improve the FTP setup process, we welcome you to complete our FTP survey to let us know how this process worked for you.