How do you modify what your website displays to users?

LordRelish

This is somewhat of a generic question about nodebb architecture since I seem to not understand how this software works at all. I am ancient web developer by today's standards and historically I've used forum software like phpbb where you just edit a file and the change is reflected on the site right away. But here all site content must be stored in a database or something?

For example, when you are posting a new topic there is in small writing "COMPOSE" with a question mark next to it. Clicking that question mark lets you know the forum is powered by markdown (in my case) and a link to the documentation. I want to update that section a bit to show a few examples of the syntax to get people started. How do I do that?
I ran a grep for the specific statement and found it to be in /node_modules/nodebb-plugin-markdown/index.js. Editing that, deactivating and reactivating the plugin, and reloading the board had no effect on the text displayed (even after clearing all browser content and forcing a reload). I also tried to update the footer in a similar manner, to no avail.

Where do I have to edit things so they are reflected on the site?

reid

In your NodeBB directory, there should be a node_modules folder. Inside there, you'll want to find the folder of the theme you're using. So, for example, if you're using lavender, you'll want to search for nodebb-theme-lavender (it'll be nodebb-theme-themename). Inside there is a templates directory, which should allow you to edit some parts of the theme.

To edit the composer, go to your NodeBB root, and then public/templates. Copy the composer.tpl file into your nodebb-theme-lavender directory, edit it, and then reload your forum. That should do the trick.

julian

@LordRelish said:

I ran a grep for the specific statement and found it to be in /node_modules/nodebb-plugin-markdown/index.js. Editing that, deactivating and reactivating the plugin, and reloading the board had no effect on the text displayed

Hm.. this should work, actually.

psychobunny

Wait, we already allow you to modify that help text in the ACP itself no need to change code!

LordRelish

@psychobunny The problem is that with the ACP Post-section feature, you can only add more text, but you can't modify existing text.