Installation

NeoFrag Reborn installs on ordinary web hosting, shared hosting included: no Docker, no Composer and no shell access are needed — the package ships with its dependencies.

Requirements

• PHP 8.2 to 8.5 with the mysqli, mbstring, openssl, curl, gd, zip, intl, fileinfo and iconv extensions, and a PHP that can hash passwords with Argon2 (most can). They are enabled in your host's control panel, often under “PHP version” or “Extensions”. The installer checks every one of them and refuses to continue if one is missing.
• MySQL 5.7, 8.0 or 8.4, or MariaDB 10.5, 10.6, 10.11, 11.4 or 11.8, with the InnoDB engine and the utf8mb4 character set. These are the versions every release of the CMS is tested against before it ships, with PHP 8.2 and 8.5: full installation, the whole test suite, and each installation profile.
• Apache with mod_rewrite (an .htaccess file is included); or nginx (nginx.conf); or Caddy (Caddyfile).
• An empty database and its credentials.
• A real domain name pointing to the server: the installer derives the site's contact address from it (noreply@your-domain) — installed by IP address, a site would have no valid sender address.

The installer

The installer runs in five steps: Requirements → Site profile → Database → Administrator → Done.

1. Upload the NeoFrag Reborn files to your web root: the contents of the neofrag-reborn/ folder of the neofrag-reborn-public-<version>.zip package (by FTP, or by unzipping it on the server). The package is downloaded from the project's releases page.

2. Open your domain: the installer starts and lists the requirements with the value it found (PHP version, extensions present).

3. Choose the site profile:

   Profile	What it installs
   Full	the core and every module in the package
   Gaming / eSport	the core and the gaming identity: forum, teams, games, events, recruitment, honours…
   Community	the core, news, forum, gallery, events, collectives and the API (for the Discord bot and integrations)
   Association / club	the core, news, forum, gallery, events, calendar, collectives, donations, membership fees (payments), newsletter, wiki and FAQ
   Core only	accounts, permissions, pages, settings — nothing more

   Modules can still be unticked one by one; the modules a module needs are added automatically, and the final screen says so. The form works without JavaScript too.

4. Fill in the database connection: the installer imports the schema, installs the chosen modules, widgets and themes, and sets up the default layouts.

5. Create the administrator account. That's it.

Modules you did not install can be added later from Administration → Themes & Addons, and those that are not in the package from the marketplace.

Command-line installation

For a scriptable deployment (server, provisioning), install/cli.php does what the installer does, without a browser — requirements included: it refuses to continue if one is missing. It installs the Full profile.

# Administrator password through an environment variable (hidden from the process list):
export NF_ADMIN_PASS='my-strong-password'
php install/cli.php \
  --db-host=localhost --db-name=neofrag --db-user=neofrag --db-pass=secret \
  --admin-user=admin --admin-email=admin@site.tld --admin-pass-env=NF_ADMIN_PASS \
  --site-name="My community" --site-url=https://site.tld --yes

Without arguments, it switches to interactive mode (masked password). Options: --db-port, --create-db (creates the database), --dry-run (validates the configuration and tests the connection without writing anything), --force (reinstalls), --no-lock (does not set the lock), --lang=fr|en|de|es|it|pt (the language of its messages), --help.

Securing access after installation

At the end, the installer sets a lock (install/db.txt): visiting /install/ again shows nothing usable. As a precaution, delete or rename the install/ folder — it is no longer needed. Enable HTTPS if your host has not. Under nginx or Caddy, start from the examples at the root (nginx.conf, Caddyfile): they already deny access to sensitive folders and files, like the .htaccess file does under Apache.

First settings

1. Administration → Settings: site name, description, favicon, contact address (check that it is valid and that a mail server can send — otherwise the contact form and registration e-mails never arrive; an SMTP server is set in Settings → E-mail, and E-mails → Send test proves it works), home page.
2. Administration → Themes & Addons: your theme, your modules.
3. Administration → Live Editor: build your pages (place your widgets in the regions).
4. Administration → Users / Permissions: create your roles and set access.
5. Scheduled tasks: scheduled posts, newsletters and event reminders go out through the site's cron (Monitoring gives its address and key). Add a task every five minutes at your host; without it, nothing scheduled is sent.

The next steps, in order: Getting started.

Troubleshooting

• “Unable to connect to the database”: check the host (often localhost, sometimes a dedicated address on shared hosting), the port (3306), the database name — it must exist and be empty — and the credentials.
• “Missing PHP extension”: enable the reported extension from your host's panel; on the command line, php -m.
• config/ folder not writable: the installer must write db.php and the secrets there. Give write access to config/, cache/, logs/, upload/, backups/.
• Installation interrupted: MySQL cannot undo a half-played CREATE TABLE — create a fresh empty database before trying again.
• 404 addresses or broken AJAX under nginx or Plesk: .htaccess is only read by Apache; see the “nginx / Plesk” note in the deployment guide.
• No e-mail is sent: look at System → Monitoring → Error log (an [email] échec envoi … line); the contact address must be valid and a transport must exist (an SMTP server configured, or a local mail agent).
• “An error occurred”, with a reference: the page crashed. The details are in the error log; the reference finds the right line.

Development

The code is on GitHub: the CMS in NeoFragReborn/neofrag, the optional addons in NeoFragReborn/extensions — tools/assembler.php places them in the CMS tree. To develop or test, any machine with PHP 8.2+ and MariaDB or MySQL will do; a Docker stack (docker-compose.yml) is provided. Details (database, migrations, tests, checks, deployment): docs/development.md.