Restrict creating new topic and blocking HTML posts for users

[Raj]

Hi NodeBB Team,

After three years of research between NodeBB, Discourse and Flarum, ultimately I have decided to go with NodeBB for my first forum.

I am doing some research on (Ubuntu and MongoDB) customizing NodeBB topic and frontpage according to my needs. I have started with topic part. I am totally new into web development. It will be great help if you can guide me with following questions,

1. How can I restrict users from creating New Topic? Only Admins and Moderators should be able to do that.

2. I am heavily dependent on HTML for customizing posts, so how to restrict general users from using Markdown HTML. Can we use two different Reply solutions for users and Mods? I mean only Admin and Mods should use HTML in the posts.

3. Is there any way to restrict quoting Admins or specific post?

4. Is there any way to start on shared hosting. I know till 2016 it was, NO, but anything changed after that?

Your guidance are highly appreciated. Thank you.

[PitaJ]

@raj

How can I restrict users from creating New Topic? Only Admins and Moderators should be able to do that.

ACP > Manage > Privileges, then select each category from the dropdown at the top right and set the privileges accordingly.

I am heavily dependent on HTML for customizing posts, so how to restrict general users from using Markdown HTML. Can we use two different Reply solutions for users and Mods? I mean only Admin and Mods should use HTML in the posts.

Not yet, but there's an issue for this on the markdown plugin repo.

Is there any way to restrict quoting Admins or specific post?

I don't think so, but you can disable mentions notifications if you're having annoying notifications all the time.

Is there any way to start on shared hosting. I know till 2016 it was, NO, but anything changed after that?

The way Node.js (which is the platform that NodeBB runs on) works isn't really compatible with shared hosting.

[Raj]

@pitaj Thank you a lot. I will try your suggestions. One more question, can we enable multiple Reply editor? I mean one for Admin and another for others?

[PitaJ]

@raj I don't know what you mean by "multiple reply editor"

[Raj]

@pitaj I mean, if multiple composers are possible? Like NodeBB has Quick Reply and Reply at the same time. Like if we can have two different WYSIWYG composers. One for Admins and another for all.

[PitaJ]

@raj what would be the purpose of doing that? I know you said you wanted admins to be about to use HTML. Do you want admins to be able to use the Redactor composer and normal users to be about to use the default one?

[Raj]

@pitaj Exactly! That will restrict other users to post HTML. Sanitization is not working for me as it is removing most of the features from my posts.

[PitaJ]

@raj what kind of features are you trying?

[Raj]

@pitaj I have html/image sliders inside my posts. That I want only Admins to post and for others it will restrict HTML.

[Raj]

No, its not working for me! I can not find way to restrict users to have HTML in their posts while only Admins having it.

Is there any way that in every topic I can have different custom HTML (just like widgets)? topic.tpl with widgets perfectly works for me but that sets the html globally while I need different for every topic.

Also nodebb custom pages plugin not working for me. It is not showing the button for adding new route.
https://github.com/NodeBB-Community/nodebb-plugin-custom-pages

And custom homepage plugin bringing the homepage down and also clicking profile icon on top right corner does not show anything. Everything works fine when I deactivate the plugin!

[julian]

You probably need to execute ./nodebb build when you activate the plugin... If you did, let us know what error you see when you go to the page to administer custom pages. The plugin should be working fine...

[Raj]

@julian Thank you. I will try that out.