Hi I'm a beginner and I'd like to create a forum with nodebb.

Though nodebb is great but I need some major changes,and I 'm getting more and more confused. The documents needs to be more specific.
. e.g I 'd like a new hompage,and some other functions (an exam system).

• Do I need to develop a new theme for that? or a new plugin?

• If I want to add some new pages to it,should I just create some tpl files?

• What do I do to connect these tpl files? Register them in Router.js file?
  e.g. I'd like to modify categories(which is the default home page for nodebb),but I don't see any in dir "views". I found one named "categories.tpl" in dir "build ".But can I modify it?Aren't those files in dir "build" automatically built by "build" command?
  I'm quite lost.Could anyone just give me hint or something? Thanks.

@PitaJ Hi,sorry to bother you,but I ran into some errors.
I set up a new page,registered it with params.router.get('/myentrance',renderEntrance).And I'd like to import the default header(with some modification later) so I placed these (<!-- IMPORT header.tpl -->) on entrance.tpl. Then the page went down.The error on console says Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected end of JSON input at JSON.parse (<anonymous>) at myentrance:12 The page shows only "Login" button and progress bar kept flashing.
I know I must've missed the data "header.tpl" needs,but what do I do to get these data? Looking forward to your reply,thanks.

@PitaJ Thank u so much!! So the correct way is to register my new url as router.get(url, middleware)in src>routes>api.js ,and then register params.router.get(url,controller); in nodebb-mytheme>lib>theme.js> theme.init = function(params, callback) {
I need to spend some time checking what do these middlewares do.May stumble into a few more errors after.Hopefully I can still go to u for advice.

@PitaJ Indeed...Thanks a lot.
I'm still having trouble making my new pages. Neither adding params.router.get('/myentrance',renderEntrance()); in theme.init function or adding router.get('/myentrance', controllers.user.getCurrentUser); works.
What do I have to do to register a url in router?

@PitaJ Already downloaded nodebb-plugin-quickstart and nodebb-theme-quickstart.
Please excuse me,I worked with Vue before,don't know much about node.js.
Perhaps I should look up documents on express to get a better understanding on nodebb?
One thing that confuses me the most is I never found categories.tpl which serves as the home page.Where is it? I can see that controller renders "categories"
res.render('categories', data).But the dir "categories" works as a service layer ,obviously not the one I'm looking for. There has to be a tpl file named "categories", and I can only find one in dir "build".
That's not the one I'm looking for,is it?

@PitaJ Hi,u r the author of "nodebb-plugin-calendar" right? Very nice to meet u,I've been reading ur code but little progress by now.
I don't feel well about using "nodebb-plugin-custom-pages", that's for a landing page right? I need a whole new set including tpl and backend code(controller,database connection etc) . I don't see any files other than .tpl in dir build which gives me doubts.
Haven't used nodebb-plugin-customize before,but that's for translation?I 'd like to develop a new function which would need everything from inserting data into database to a new page.
e.g I'm using theme-slick as a starter, but what should I do other than making a new tpl if I want a page which would query some data from mongodb and insert them into the page?
Sorry the upload func is down. I'll use text instead.

what should I do if I want to make a new tpl in client side? Where do I put controller?Do I need to keep anything else in mind?

Hi I'm a beginner and I'd like to create a forum with nodebb.

Though nodebb is great but I need some major changes,and I 'm getting more and more confused. The documents needs to be more specific.
. e.g I 'd like a new hompage,and some other functions (an exam system).

• Do I need to develop a new theme for that? or a new plugin?

• If I want to add some new pages to it,should I just create some tpl files?

• What do I do to connect these tpl files? Register them in Router.js file?
  e.g. I'd like to modify categories(which is the default home page for nodebb),but I don't see any in dir "views". I found one named "categories.tpl" in dir "build ".But can I modify it?Aren't those files in dir "build" automatically built by "build" command?
  I'm quite lost.Could anyone just give me hint or something? Thanks.

Hi,I'm new to nodeBB and I was trying to develop on Intellij.
I simply add Configuration for Grunt using the default Grunt.js in the nodeBB folder.
But I noticed something was different between running Grunt and running "nodebb --dev start".
I wrote an empty plugin using "nodebb-plugin-quickstart". It works normal on "nodebb-dev-start".
But,when I use Grunt to run it,it says "warn: [upgrade/appendPluginScripts] Unable to read plugin.json for plugin nodebb-plugin-fr-exam. Skipping." And all the sudden,the empty plugin I modified doesn't work anymore.No settings on ACP , no consoles on pages(I modified from nodebb-plugin-quickstart).
What exactly did I do wrong?
I'm pretty sure the dev group is using Grunt since the building process is annoying.There's no reason I can't use Grunt ,right?Please help.

Here's the complete error log occurs on Windows.
Screenshots:
![CM~8(9CYHD8TWW@]F~36]U8.png](https://i.imgur.com/ccs4Yq0.png)
![CM~8(9CYHD8TWW@]F~36]U8.png](https://i.imgur.com/TsXwusY.png)
Log text:
Dependencies outdated or not yet installed.
Installing them now...

npm WARN deprecated core-js@2.6.11: core-js@<3 is no longer maintained and not recommended for usage due to the number of iss
ues. Please, upgrade your dependencies to the actual version of core-js@3.
npm ERR! code 128
npm ERR! Command failed: git clone --mirror -q git://github.com/thomaspark/bootswatch.git C:\Users\huawei\AppData\Roaming\npm
-cache_cacache\tmp\git-clone-3825054a.git --config core.longpaths=true
npm ERR! warning: templates not found in C:\Users\huawei\AppData\Local\Temp\pacote-git-template-tmp\git-clone-fd3314bb
npm ERR! fatal: read error: Invalid argument
npm ERR! fatal: early EOF
npm ERR! fatal: index-pack failed
npm ERR!

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR! C:\Users\huawei\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache_logs\2020-06-13T03_49_30_961Z-debug.log
Error installing dependencies!
message: Command failed: npm install --production
stdout: null
stderr: null
D:\Coding\Web_Project\NodeBB-v1.14.x\src\cli\package-install.js:72
throw e;
^

Error: Command failed: npm install --production
at checkExecSyncError (child_process.js:630:11)
at Object.execSync (child_process.js:666:15)
at Object.installAll (D:\Coding\Web_Project\NodeBB-v1.14.x\src\cli\package-install.js:63:9)
at Object.<anonymous> (D:\Coding\Web_Project\NodeBB-v1.14.x\src\cli\index.js:60:18)
at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1138:30)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1158:10)
at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:986:32)
at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:879:14)
at Module.require (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1026:19)
at require (internal/modules/cjs/helpers.js:72:18) {
status: 1,
signal: null,
output: [ null, null, null ],
pid: 552,
stdout: null,
stderr: null
}

I suppose I can just forbid users from changing skins to bypass this error.

@PitaJ I installed node as sudo. So I had to install everything as a non-sudo user,including mongodb/node right?
Exactly same issue on windows.I simply ran "nodebb setup",not as an Administrator,then it got stucked.The error log says it couldn't fetch bootswatch git mirror because of invalid arguments.

@PitaJ For example,I ran "nodebb setup" as non-root user on CentOS7,and it stopped and said “insufficient privileges”
I tried to install it both on Windows and CentOs.I never ran node command as an Administrator on Windows,but still can't do.
Is there any way I can install a ".less" version of bootswatch manually?
Also,should it failed,it has nothing to do with Theme plugins right?