Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?

scottalanmiller

@herruu said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

As said, the installation process is very complicated

Here are install instructions that demonstrate how crazy simple an install is, even on a dedicated server. Would be far easier on shared.

Deploying NodeBB 1.14 on CentOS 8 with MongoDB 4.2

NodeBB is a powerful, open source package for building online communities and forums. We usually recommend running it on CentOS 8, primarily because of the n...

MangoLassi (mangolassi.it)

And most of the instructions there aren't about NodeBB, they are about doing basic server updates, installing the operating platform, acquiring and installing the database server, etc.

Only a couple lines of all of that is getting and installing NodeBB. For just NodeBB on shared, you can easily install with a single command. It literally can't be made easier. I've deployed a lot of these, we do one command installs regularly.

HerrUU

@scottalanmiller Thanks for your reply , so to use it in production, I'll need to move to a different provider. For now I'm just testing it on a desktop at home but I'm liking it a lot so changing providers is not impossible (my current contract ends somewhere beginning of next year).
I'm looking into how I can copy the databases from woltlab (php) to nodebb. Bit of a winter project when the weather is bad

scottalanmiller

@herruu said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

I'm looking into how I can copy the databases from woltlab (php) to nodebb. Bit of a winter project when the weather is bad

You can't. Not realistically. So the issue is that whatever WoltLab is using, and I'll just guess that it is MySQL / MariaDB is going to be relational data and MongoDB is document data. They are two wholly different types of data storage.

So copying, no, it can't be done. It's fundamentally impossible.

That said, to do this you'd need to learn the database format of the old system, and the database format of the new system, and write your own conversion software that reads the relational data and transforms it into documents and inserts into MongoDB. It "can" be done, but it's all custom coding and quite a bit of work to know both systems under the hood so well.

This is a lot of the power of NodeBB, using a screaming fast ultra-modern document database back end. But moving data from a relational system will be painful.

PitaJ

Nodebb-plugin-import can help

scottalanmiller

@herruu said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

so to use it in production, I'll need to move to a different provider.

Yes, but avoid shared hosting unless it is a dedicated NodeBB provider. This is not WordPress and you'll be handling a lot more traffic, a lot faster and more dynamically. You need control of your database, of your NodeJS versions, and so forth. Shared will be too costly and without any benefit. Literally, no benefit.

Building a CentOS or similar (Alma, Rocky) Linux system on someone like Vultr, Linode, or DigitalOcean will give you non-shared power and flexibility for likely LESS money than shared hosting. Shared hosting is rarely a good idea. It's good for really low power, low need websites which is why it is often done free for that market. Once you are hosting a production system, you'll want more power and that doesn't mean more money or effort.

scottalanmiller

@pitaj said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

Nodebb-plugin-import can help

What formats does it support?

scottalanmiller

@herruu said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

For now I'm just testing it on a desktop at home but I'm liking it a lot so changing providers is not impossible (my current contract ends somewhere beginning of next year).

You can get into Vultr to host it for around $6/mo. So unless you are ultra poor, you probably don't need to be spending a lot. Your forum sounds pretty busy, so that might not be enough.

I run MangoLassi and we can bounce off around 200,000,000 views a month and we run off of Vultr High Frequency 4GB plan at $24 USD / mo and the site is screaming fast even under the heaviest load. So while $24 is not nothing and I totally get why no one wants to waste money, it's also not an amount that you generally worry about contracts to avoid. You should not spend more than $24/mo, you won't see any benefits. You could easily spend less.

We also use CloudFlare to aid in performance. We are a global site and need the caching. Been in production on NodeBB since March, 2014 when it was still an alpha release.

scottalanmiller

@herruu if during your project you get the feeling that things are hard or not working as simply as they should, just post on here or on MangoLassi. Loads of Linux / Mongo / NodeJS / NodeBB expertise and people will jump in to help you. Getting up and running should take you no more than 30 minutes. Even if you run into problems, someone will get you sorted super fast.

Transferring your old data might be painful. Might be easy. It depends on that plugin. We were lucky that we started from scratch and never had to bring data in from somewhere else. That's the part that will cause some time delays.

julian

@scottalanmiller said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

@pitaj said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

Nodebb-plugin-import can help

What formats does it support?

Lots! https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=nodebb-import-*

Although not sure if Woltlab BB is supported as one of the exporters... might be you need to contact us to build it out, unless you know how to do it yourself

gotwf

You go Mr. Miller!

So long away, and then, poof! A deluge of cuttin' to the chase wisdom. Salute!

How's Nicaragua, eh? A little bird told me you were groovin' on it.

Have mercy!

scottalanmiller

@gotwf said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

You go Mr. Miller!

So long away, and then, poof! A deluge of cuttin' to the chase wisdom. Salute!

How's Nicaragua, eh? A little bird told me you were groovin' on it.

Thanks, good to be "back", been such a busy summer with the move. Life is great in Nicaragua! When are you visiting?

HerrUU

@scottalanmiller said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

ys.

Thank you all for the great support you are giving My currenct hosting contract runs until june next year so this gives me some time to get acquainted with NodeBB.

I'm now looking into writing some simple plugins but I'm starting from scratch so still some learning to be done. But this is off-topic I think

Anyways, I have discovered that NodeBB is indeed very fast. So that is certainly a plus to choose it.
And your support is top notch too, I get answers when I ask a question.

Perhaps a few 'to be improved' would be to have a decent plugin database (even though I can search for them from inside the ACP) and some more themes.

gotwf

@herruu Welcome to the fun house!

scottalanmiller

@herruu said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

@scottalanmiller said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

ys.

Thank you all for the great support you are giving My currenct hosting contract runs until june next year so this gives me some time to get acquainted with NodeBB.

I'm now looking into writing some simple plugins but I'm starting from scratch so still some learning to be done. But this is off-topic I think

Anyways, I have discovered that NodeBB is indeed very fast. So that is certainly a plus to choose it.
And your support is top notch too, I get answers when I ask a question.

Perhaps a few 'to be improved' would be to have a decent plugin database (even though I can search for them from inside the ACP) and some more themes.

It's a very helpful community. Everyone's here to help out. Welcome to NodeBB! It's been great for the ~8 years that we've been on it here!

I agree, a dozen or so pre-made and officially maintained themes would be stellar.

julian

I agree, a dozen or so pre-made and officially maintained themes would be stellar.

@scottalanmiller Agreed! We would love to partner with some designers to create a set of maintained themes based off of Persona.

In the meantime we have Persona, Lavender, Vanilla, Slick, and Material (though Material is actually a third-party theme).

Finding the designers is the hard part, as well as identifying potential stumbling blocks for said designers.

Arthega

I just wanted to share my experience here:
I tried setting up nodeBB and discourse with docker-compose.

While nodeBB was ready and running after 5min - by just cloning the project and starting up the stack I was not able to make discourse run in any environment after like 12 - 16 hours.

If you're self hosting - save your time. The discourse community still has no officially supported docker-compose-setup which personally i harshly criticize and which makes the impression of "self hosting" not really being a main feature of the platform.

julian

@Arthega thanks for sharing your thoughts, it's nice to know that NodeBB is considered easy to install.

Coming from a PHP forum, it is easy to think that these ~~new form~~ newer forum softwares are not easy to install at all. It's all a matter of perspective I suppose!

scottalanmiller

"New form of software", jaja. Didn't we just turn a decade on this particular one?

julian

@scottalanmiller ha! Text to speech mangled my words. "Newer forum softwares".

But yes, how time flies... NodeBB isn't quite a decade old, but it will be soon

brazzerstop

@Arthega Oh yes, the Discourse container can only be installed on the latest version of Ubuntu

Discourse (my experience)

You can't install forum without Docker, on VPS with 1GB RAM you get a load of up to 80% CPU and this is on an fresh install with empty forum.
You don't have a password from you're database (can't connect remotely), you don't have a password from default System account, you can't remove a category, topic who was created System account , Admin can't remove permanently the topic or post of users. Feel free, right? System who are you? What are you doing on my forum?
E-mail. You're users need use valid e-mail and confirm e-mail, Admin can't disable this. You can back up your data in the admin panel, but you can't download a copy from the admin panel, a download link is sent to admin email. Forcing you to use e-mail means that you will have to create additional load on your server by configuring it to send letters or spend money on a third-party SMTP service.
Trust level - No comment, it's illogical setting and Admin need more time to understand how it's work and how disable it, because I don't wont to allow my users banned other users or edit post other users, it's hybryd of wikipedia?
Rewards. You can't remove default rewards. You can disable the default rewards, but you can't create a custom reward with you're settings. You can only change image or text from default reward, but create you're - NO.
Topic component. This feature like a plugin widget essential on NodeBB, but you can't choose what's group/trust level can view you custom html banner. For example if you want show banner "Hi, guest" for the guest and "Welcome" for registered users - you need add script to you're html banner and more scripts for so small feature - this is a kick of you're perfomance.
Discourse generate a meta tag to show everybody whats version (with commit identificator) a you use - gift for a hacker. Because if you not have a time to upgrade, but information about vulnerability of you're version in public, it's a risk and hackers can use this meta tag in a Google to found a community with version whats he can to atack.

Discourse use onebox for generate a preview link, but Admin can't setting to allow generated preview only from trust domain, for example I don't wont generate preview for the Vimeo, and want allow only from YouTube - you can't do it. Onebox of Discourse it's a gift for the DDOS atackers, because if you open composer and pasted a link from site iplogger - attackers get ip address of you're server.