@a3d Don't take these statements the wrong way, take them as a chance to learn more.
Apache is still one of the most widely used http servers and works just fine with NodeBB, so I wouldn't say it's old tech that doesn't support node.js. Obviously, node.js requires node.js to run. NodeBB utilizes an http server to proxy that node.js app out to the world via the server.
Shared hosting isn't old and outdated either (it does usually run a couple versions old on php though). It's just usually very limiting on what it allows one to do. For the most part you can't actually install software. You can only setup php and other scripts that run using software already provided. Not useful if you need Node.js and your hosting provider doesn't have that setup for you.