Technical Requirements
From Kunena
The technical requirements of Kunena are different from Joomla itself and other components. Due to the fact that Kunena might be running on sites with thousands of active users and millions of posts, performance features of certain newer components are required.
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Web Server Requirements
Kunena is a PHP/MySQL based component for Joomla. In addition to the Joomla these are the minimum requirements if you choose to install Kunena on your system:
Kunena 1.0.8 - 1.0.9
PHP >= 4.3.0 recommended >= 5.0.0 MySQL >= 5.0.0 recommended >= 5.0.0
Kunena 1.0.10 - 1.0.11
PHP >= 4.3.9 recommended >= 5.0.3 MySQL >= 4.1.20 recommended >= 5.0.0
Kunena 1.5.3 - 1.5.5
PHP >= 5.0.3 recommended >= 5.2.3 MySQL >= 4.1.20 recommended >= 5.0.0
For performance we highly recommend the usage of PHP 5.2 as well as MySQL 5.0. Both of these versions have become a default in most hosting environments.
You can check the currently installed components in the back-end through the System Information screen.
Kunena installer checks minimum system requirements, and will abort the install if requirements are not met. If you receive any such error message, it is advised to uninstall the component, upgrade your system and re-install Kunena. The abort is required as various Kunena system and database calls will fail (fatal error) on outdated PHP and MySQL versions.
You can find the latest MySQL and PHP versions on their respective sites.
Joomla Requirements
Kunena 1.0 is a a Joomla 1.0 native component and as such can run on both Joomla 1.0 and Joomla 1.5 (with Legacy mode turned on). Kunena 1.0 has been extensively tested on both platforms and specialized Joomla 1.5 code has been embedded into the application for maximum compatibility with both platforms.
Kunena 1.5 is Joomla 1.5 Native component and will not run in Joomla 1.0 or Joomla 1.6. It is currently considered to be the most stable release of Kunena.
It's highly recommended to use latest Joomla releases. The Joomla security releases are for the protection of your site and your users and fix various high risk security vulnerabilities.
Recommended Joomla versions are:
* Joomla 1.0.15 for Kunena 1.0 * Joomla 1.5.14 for Kunena 1.5
Please check the Joomla website for the latest security releases of both versions.
PHP Settings
Due to the size of Kunena as a component, some minor adjustments to the PHP settings of your server might be required.
In particular Joomla 1.5 uses an integrated installer that requires significant resources and time during install. Failure to set these parameters often results in an incomplete install that gets aborted in the middle of it and most commonly (depending on your error logging settings) ends in a White - empty screen.
php max_execution_time >= 120 php memory_limit >= 64M safe_mode = off
You can validate the settings inside the Joomla back-end inside the System Information under PHP Information. Only when these settings are reflected in there are you ready to start the installation. Various systems keep multiple copies of the php.ini file and only your hosting provider (through documentation or support) can help you locate the proper one.
As long as the Joomla System Information does not reflect the proper settings, you have not modified the right ini file. In addition it is required to restart your Apache server service for some of these settings to take affect.
FireBoard Compatibility
Starting with Kunena 1.0.8 You can no longer run FireBoard in parallel with Kunena. You must uninstall any prior release prior to upgrading to Kunena. Several structural bugs required upgrades to the database structure that make the database incompatible with FireBoard or any fork based on 1.0.5.
The FireBoard instance would revert some of the changes back and can potentially make Kunena to not display any messages in the Recent Discussions tab. If this should be the case, please uninstall FB as quickly as possible, go to the Kunena configuration, remove the '0' inside the setting:
Recent Post Settings->Show Category
and hit save.
NOTE: If you're upgrading from FB versions 1.0.0 or 1.0.1, please copy attachments and avatars to a safe place before uninstalling it. Uninstalling those two versions will delete all the files uploaded by your users!
