Welcome to Flarum! I'll start off by saying that running a server isn't extremely complicated, but it requires a certain level of technical knowledge and ability to maintain things. Why?
- If something breaks, you can ask for help, but ultimately you're responsible for getting it fixed
- If your server is improperly configured, you could open yourself up to security breaches
- Many things, like installing PHP extensions (which aren't the same as Flarum extensions) or configuring your web server to serve Flarum, are outside the scope of what we can provide support with.
- Servers cost money
This is in no way meant to discourage you from running your own server, but you should go into it aware of the potential challenges. If you're not interested in this, https://www.freeflarum.com/ is an excellent solution that will fit the needs of most small communities.
The first thing to note is that while plenty of hosting providers offer tools like CPanel to help manage a server, you will always have the most control with a command line. This is what you see when you ssh into a server. If you want to manage a server, you kinda have to know how to use a command line to change directories, move/copy files, and run scripts/programs. If you don't know, look up a tutorial (there's A LOT, one of the google results that seems sensible is https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/command-line-for-beginners#1-overview).
I see you've both installed Flarum and I'm assuming that it's available over the web so there's no need to do web server work. That being said, you are both interested in installing extensions. For that, you need to use a CLI tool called composer. To do this:
- Go to the folder containing your flarum installation (it should have a file called
config.php) in your command line
- run
composer require package-name (for instance, composer require fof/links)
- If successfully installed, go to your admin dashboard and enable the extension
