SSO and Mailer integration

[vegetagz6]

@julian @psychobunny I have a small suggestion, since nodebb is going through lots of core API changes with each major updates, it would be really helpful if some features like SSO and SMTP mailer could be integrated by default. Once these core features are there, then we will not have to worry about plugin incompatibility or anything no matter how much changes nodebb goes through in future. If you ask me, by this version 0.5, NodeBB is "almost" a complete forum package even if we do not use any external plugins. So with some core features like SSO and all inbuilt, no one will have to worry about (atleast most people) plugins, and their incompatibility with each major updates and all.
And ya one more suggestion, please remove the plugins installation list from ACP, or else only include plugins which are compatible with each version or fully tested by community members.
Hope some of these suggestions are plausible in the 0.6 version.

[julian]

We can't build SSO or Emailers into NodeBB simply because there are so many choices, and we don't want to force users to use one solution.

We have already run into issues where a hard-coded decision was not accepted by everybody (e.g. Gravatar integration).

We may bundle the local emailer with NodeBB, however, as I believe it does work with the latest version and is free.

[vegetagz6]

@julian Hmm gravatar seemed pretty awesome to me, I mean millions use gravatar by default, I guess that was the right choice. It is better than some default icon which looks dull.

Also is there any way to filter out the plugins based on its compatibility with a new version, inside the ACP.

[vegetagz6]

Also, just saying it would have been awesome if the Majestic theme is also open source. I guess @psychobunny made it O.o It just looks too awesome to be sold seperately (last i checked).

[a_5mith]

@Rahul-Ramesh said:

@julian Hmm gravatar seemed pretty awesome to me, I mean millions use gravatar by default, I guess that was the right choice. It is better than some default icon which looks dull.

Yes, but the point is hard coding something in means it can't be removed. There are many other Avatar services out there similar to Gravatar that better suit individuals needs.

For example http://avatars.io/ incorporates gravatar, but allows you to specify an avatar based on any number of factors (Facebook, Twitter ID etc). Or http://www.splitbrain.org/projects/monsterid which creates unique monster characters based on email hashing.

Which is the same point with bundling SSO or emailers. There's no point bundling Twitter into the software when it's banned in China and people use Weebo instead. Creating an SSO endpoint is relatively simple when you've got an oAuth Passport you can refer to.

@Rahul-Ramesh said:

Also, just saying it would have been awesome if the Majestic theme is also open source. I guess @psychobunny made it O.o It just looks too awesome to be sold seperately (last i checked).

It was made by @trevor, the quality and time he spent on it should be worth the price alone.

[Shard]

Dumb question, cause it's come up on my side of the house a couple of times and is relevantish to the thread - has there been consideration to pulling gravatar back out into a plugin?

[a_5mith]

@Shard said:

Dumb question, cause it's come up on my side of the house a couple of times and is relevantish to the thread - has there been consideration to pulling gravatar back out into a plugin?

I believe so yes, but it's a lot of work, it's been quite heavily baked in to NodeBBs core. So it would take some time to get it back out again and into a plugin without causing issues.

I'm not sure if it's possible, but overwriting it with a plugin may be a better solution. So Gravatar by default, use another if available.

[Shard]

@a_5mith I suppose that's effectively the same thing. Any pointers on how to implement that kind of behaviour?

[a_5mith]

@Shard said:

@a_5mith I suppose that's effectively the same thing. Any pointers on how to implement that kind of behaviour?

I'm not sure to be honest with you, if there were a hook that allowed you to set the user avatar, then you could use a third party service like Apiary to allow a user to set their avatar using that. But I'm not 100% on if that would be possible. Would need to ask one of the devs.

[julian]

Gravatar was built-into NodeBB because of one simple reason: We didn't have plugins back then

Since then, yes, there's a desire to extract that logic out into a plugin of its own. It's low-priority for us at the moment, though.

It also means if somebody from the community wants to get into the code and submit a pull request, we'd be forever in your debt

[Shard]

@julian @a_5mith

I'm a hack on my good days but I'll give it a whirl as soon as I wrap my head around plugins in general.

I have a small stack of plugins we need for our feature set anyway.