Monetizing your board... how?
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I run a nodebb board but it's to help our members out on a mostly free service. We don't charge them for this help, we just try to help them.
A friend of mine was commenting on the forum and how much he likes the look and feel of it and asked how he might be able to monetize it if he wanted to build a pay service.
I was not able to answer his question so I thought I would ask here.
To clarify, he's not asking what kind of service he could offer but how he could charge for certain parts of the board. For example, having the ability to take part in certain things or join certain groups/forums or have a certain level, things like that.
I'm assuming there are some plugins but I would suggest to him not to use plugins unless they were very well maintained.
Anyways, this question might be too broad but I thought I'd ask and see if anyone can share any useful info.
Thanks.
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Back to the matter at hand — @baris' suggestion of using a stripe subs plugin could work, but might be overkill depending on needs.
Some sites already manage their user base separately (e.g. some kind of user CRM or similar), and NodeBB could also be set up to use that as an authenticator, and add users to specific groups based on privilege level.
Then you could display certain categories to certain users based on said level
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@baris I appreciate that but I would never suggest using a plugin that needs updating on a live site.
It's too bad this is not simply built in. Seems like it would offer admins a better option for how to show users too. In addition, some admins might not want the user list to be shown other than to validated members, not the public.
Thanks again.
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@NodeHam We wouldn't support this in core simply because there are myriad ways to actually do it, and every admin has their preferred way
For example, it would be short-sighted of us to assume that everyone wanted to use Stripe as subscription service, because there are other companies in that same space (GumTree, PayPal, etc.)
Some — like me — would prefer not to use them at all, so it'd be superfluous code to be maintained.
Edit: I forked out the discussion re: proxy service to a separate topic
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J julian forked this topic on
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We wouldn't support this in core simply because there are myriad ways to actually do it, and
every admin has their preferred waySorry, I was talking about users icons :). I got mixed up in the two posts I made yesterday.
Do you mean that nodebb is able to use something like LDAP or some other means to store the users? I suppose I've not looked at the API in a long time. It probably has the answers. Mind you, it would be a lot less headache to keep it all in one place, nodebb for me.
Maybe the API or some custom code could be the answer but not a near dead plugin where there's no way to know when the author will ever get back to it.
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@NodeHam Whenever someone mentions LDAP, AD, or SAML, my soul dies a little
But yes, it is possible that NodeBB could interface with those via a plugin, and then slot users into groups based on response.
But again, would still be a plugin
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My assumption is more nefarious
Yes, depending on what the code is and how unsuspecting the target forum/service owner it.
You'd think that would be a one time payment though. "Here, put this plugin on your site, it does this little thing and we'll pay you $200/month for that". It would not be user count based which is why I was thinking they are gaining more data when more users are providing it.I cannot imagine how many think they are making a few bucks every month but causing massive problems on the Internet unknowingly.
@eeeee Good of you to spot this and even share it.
