Nodebb - my opinion
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I must first note that this forum is really great, and people love it. Quick Navigation, friendly interface, modern design, looks good on mobile devices, differs from other forums that are still suffering from old style (and slow) navigation etc.
On the other hand I have to make a couple of positive reviews:Database - although Redis very fast and scalable database, there is a problem when huge amounts of data. Database is excellent for fast applications, caching, analysis (small forums) etc. but I'm not sure what will happen with the memory when huge amounts of data.
I noticed that almost every addon (plugin, theme) is broken. But it's not so terrible.
Why some people avoid this board is that it is impossible to initiate session or to check whether a user is logged. This option has almost every forum and it is a great disadvantage.
With all the positive things that provides this forum, there are some major flaws that "rejects" some users.
Of course, keep up good work.Regards.
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Not sure about sessions, but online users are available at https://community.nodebb.org/api/users/online
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Yes, but not a current user data.
Also, I noticed a lot of errors in console like:
WebSocket connection to 'wss://WEBSITE.com/socket.io/?EIO=3&transport=websocket&sid=9OLbJXy-15tQ70WWAAGX' failed: Error during WebSocket handshake: Unexpected response code: 400
templates/activeusers.tpl?v=1433525758000 Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found)
Uncaught Error: Unable to load template: activeusers (Not Found)
[translator] Global invocation of the translator is now deprecated, please
requirethe module instead. -
Seems to new bugs arise every day. Forum is quite unstable.
Now pictures from profiles of some users missing (including my own), without any reason.
One of the user said me one day ago that he can not see the pictures, and now it is happening to me.And to add - markdown in textarea is in my opinion very ugly. Maybe people who use a wiki like, but most users hate it. WYSIWYG editor is much better solution (even old style bbcode).
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@castbound are you using the master branch? That branch is in active development and is unstable since a lot of changes are happening everyday to the code.
If you would like to test the forum i sugest you to use the 0.7.0 stable branch, if it is not the case.
Kind regards.
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@castbound said:
And to add - markdown in textarea is in my opinion very ugly. Maybe people who use a wiki like, but most users hate it. WYSIWYG editor is much better solution (even old style bbcode).
WYSIWYG should be on it's way. How is bbcode any different. Rather than
[b]this is bold[/b], you just do**this is bold**, a lot quicker. So I disagree with your opinion on BBcode. -
@belstgut said:
@julian But familiarity is what makes it easier for most users.
they probably don't want to learn a new markup language for every forum. So they stick with what they know.This is true. But tbh nothing about NodeBB is like other forums. To my knowledge, there isn't any other forum software written in NodeJS.
Markdown is currently more heavily used by developer types, but everything has to start somewhere. BB code wasn't invented with the forum; it was something new that was a way to decrease the learning curve of html.
In a similar vein, Markdown is even simpler, reducing the need to have to remember to close each tag, and NodeBB even includes a live preview to boot! That's not something I've seen anywhere else.
My only real gripe with Markdown is that there are so many different flavors (er, flavours
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WebSocket connection to 'ws://forum_url.in/socket.io/?EIO=3&transport=websocket&sid=yV9a49Eps8iaGiu3AADc' failed: Error during WebSocket handshake: Unexpected response code: 400
I get this error , i'm using 0.7.1
Also there should be an easy way to upgrade the forum. -
Opinions differ. My opinion is that markdown is pretty bad and I don't think it will be the future.
Example of this is that none of the users did not know how to use markdown, but did not have much problem with BBCode (learns pretty fast). If markdown shorter, does not necessarily mean that one is better.
Users simply knows that B is bold, URL is link, IMG is image and just put it between tags and it's harder to mix with raw text than markdown. Also, I remember on old forums (and also new) you have option to create your own bbcodes and insert HTML for tooltips, embed youtube video or any other video, spoilers, text highlight and any other HTML code.
There are many more options and the more flexible. Markdown is designed for simple formatting (bold, headings, lists and a few other small things).
One of the users asked me how to insert clicktable image with Markdown. I show him and he answered me: "Wow, it's scary! How, invented this?"
And I totally agree with him.After all, it does not much matter. I do not see a future in Markdown. Also I think it would be much easier to use BBCode with WYSIWYG editor than Markdown because BBCode structure is logical like HTML structure.
However, I decided to use another forum, because NodeBB is very buggy (see first posts).
Of course, this does not mean that I will not follow its development, but as long as there is a great incompatibility with plugins (after core update or similar) and no integration of user sessions and database, I think that this forum will be limited to a smaller number of users.Regards.
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@castbound I will say that NodeBB can be a bit on the buggy and unpolished side. But that didn't stop me from using this software due the fact thats its so much better innovation then I see of any other forum software, And the reason some of the plugins don't work (Even 50% of the NPM list works) is because of some major core change a while back. And those plugins basically got abandoned.
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@Kowlin you heve yo be concious that Nodebb don't event got to the 1.0.0 version. So clearly some points might be polished till then.
On the other point, I haven't seen yet anyone who asked for help regarding a plugin and didn't get support from the community. Sometimes only is needed a to point some aspect about a plugin to get it corrected in very little time. This community just rocks.
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@castbound I have to ask, what was the last forum software you used that was version 0.x? This is typical software development, alpha and beta versions are going to be buggy.
I would encourage you to give markdown a fair chance. FWIW bulleted lists are magnitudes easier and more intuitive. Saying a new technology is terrible and no one will ever get used to it is a premature assessment, how do you think people got used to:
- HTML
- BBCODE
- writing a different language
- learning to type on a keyboard
- using Twitter
Yet here we are...
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@Blue-Orange said:
a basic top notch state of the art composer
Wat?
basic, or state of the art?Also, are we arguing about syntax, or formatting capability?
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No. A composer that works!!!! Not the crap that nodebb calls a redactor. It's the crappiest shit ever. Even the most simplistic forumsoftware like the far more inferior Buddypress or BBpress has a way and far better redactor/composer. NodeBB should be ashamed to have this shitty redactor with no options in the software. Where everything is about content or sharing content etc.........the redactor should be the top notch element in the software.....no discussion!!
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@BDHarrington7 said:
Also, are we arguing about syntax, or formatting capability?
NO.......just a complete redactor any ass/dummie/nono/beginner can use with all the options possible.....where you can upload pictures and visuals from your pc instead of stupid url's, where you can justify text and make text smaller and bigger and add another font....etc,etc,etc,etc,etc,etc,etc,etc. A REDACTOR That is top notch as you were writing a book on your pc.....like tinymce which is used by millions and millions of users worldwide.....MILLIONS!!
