05-03-2012, 07:40 AM
Don't worry, Shadowfang is a pretty friendly person and I'm sure he'd be happy to train candidates even if you aren't an actual IT person.
As for training, I suggest downloading XAMPP and set things up, then download phpBB from the official site and install it on your test server. That way, you get access to the forum to toy with, PHPMyAdmin to also toy with (which is why knowing MySQL is important, since PHPMyAdmin is a frontend for that). It might be a hassle to install at first, it's certainly not easy, but once you get it working it's fairly simple to get around, bar the actual usage of PHPMyAdmin or tinkering with phpBB's Admin Control Panel.
You could try tasks like installing mods and smileys on phpBB, since they both require FTP access which us normal Administrators don't have. Also check whether they are compatible with the current version of phpBB. Check if they are compatible with all our forum skins. We use prosilver, subsilver2 (these are the default ones), Black Pearl, Rainbow Pearl and Cerulean.
With PHPMyAdmin you could try database optimizing, but I haven't done much in PHPMyAdmin myself. There's also the matter that I gave myself root's powers in PHPMyAdmin, which is technically unlimited power. In the live environment, it's too risky to hand over all the controls to a secondary tech admin, especially if we're less experienced. So chances we'll just have enough privileges to do things Shadow would want us to be able to do. However, for purely testing purposes, root powers might be handy because it allows you to do anything on your test database.
Furthermore, keep in mind that the System Admin position wouldn't be solely just for the forum, as we have plans to launch a main site and a Wiki (hence the questions about Wordpress and Wiki software). It could be possible that System Admins could be divided accordingly (i.e., Shadowfang has complete control, and we'd have a Forum SysAdmin, a site SysAdmin, etc.) but this is just my guess and it's up to Shadowfang entirely how he'd want things to run or how he'd find it the most operational/optimal.
Also, you might want to read these documentations, or at least dabble in them.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.phpbb.com/support/documentation/3.0/">http://www.phpbb.com/support/documentation/3.0/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/">http://dev.mysql.com/doc/</a><!-- m --> (Note that our live forum uses MySQL 5.0.91mm-log, XAMPP uses MySQL(i) 5.5.16)
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.php.net/docs.php">http://www.php.net/docs.php</a><!-- m -->
[strike]Don't worry, I haven't really read these myself either. 8D[/strike]
As for training, I suggest downloading XAMPP and set things up, then download phpBB from the official site and install it on your test server. That way, you get access to the forum to toy with, PHPMyAdmin to also toy with (which is why knowing MySQL is important, since PHPMyAdmin is a frontend for that). It might be a hassle to install at first, it's certainly not easy, but once you get it working it's fairly simple to get around, bar the actual usage of PHPMyAdmin or tinkering with phpBB's Admin Control Panel.
You could try tasks like installing mods and smileys on phpBB, since they both require FTP access which us normal Administrators don't have. Also check whether they are compatible with the current version of phpBB. Check if they are compatible with all our forum skins. We use prosilver, subsilver2 (these are the default ones), Black Pearl, Rainbow Pearl and Cerulean.
With PHPMyAdmin you could try database optimizing, but I haven't done much in PHPMyAdmin myself. There's also the matter that I gave myself root's powers in PHPMyAdmin, which is technically unlimited power. In the live environment, it's too risky to hand over all the controls to a secondary tech admin, especially if we're less experienced. So chances we'll just have enough privileges to do things Shadow would want us to be able to do. However, for purely testing purposes, root powers might be handy because it allows you to do anything on your test database.
Furthermore, keep in mind that the System Admin position wouldn't be solely just for the forum, as we have plans to launch a main site and a Wiki (hence the questions about Wordpress and Wiki software). It could be possible that System Admins could be divided accordingly (i.e., Shadowfang has complete control, and we'd have a Forum SysAdmin, a site SysAdmin, etc.) but this is just my guess and it's up to Shadowfang entirely how he'd want things to run or how he'd find it the most operational/optimal.
Also, you might want to read these documentations, or at least dabble in them.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.phpbb.com/support/documentation/3.0/">http://www.phpbb.com/support/documentation/3.0/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/">http://dev.mysql.com/doc/</a><!-- m --> (Note that our live forum uses MySQL 5.0.91mm-log, XAMPP uses MySQL(i) 5.5.16)
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.php.net/docs.php">http://www.php.net/docs.php</a><!-- m -->
[strike]Don't worry, I haven't really read these myself either. 8D[/strike]
![[+]](https://neoarkcradle.net/forum/images/collapse_collapsed.png)