Installation

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FlaskBB requires Python 3.12 or newer and uses uv to manage its dependencies and virtual environment. Install uv first if you haven't already, then clone FlaskBB:

$ git clone https://github.com/flaskbb/flaskbb.git
$ cd flaskbb

uv takes care of creating an isolated environment and installing dependencies for you when you run the commands below - there is no separate requirements file to install from and no virtualenv to activate by hand.

To make configuring FlaskBB easier, we have included a little wizard which will ask you some questions and based on your answers it will generate a config file flaskbb.cfg in the root folder of FlaskBB. You are free to edit and modify the file afterwards.

$ make devconfig

During the installation process you are asked about your username, your email address and the password for your administrator user.

$ make install

Run the development server and visit localhost:5000 to see if everything worked.

$ make run

The make targets above are thin wrappers around uv run flaskbb makeconfig -d, uv run flaskbb install and uv run flaskbb run --debugger --reload --debug respectively, if you'd rather call flaskbb through uv run directly.

Head over to the Deployment docs to see how FlaskBB can be deployed, or read the full installation guide in the documentation.