@psychobunny - the only things i installed this most recent time via command was supervisor and forever. the other was installed via ACP. this installation was done via the docs link offered to me above.

When my site went down the day before, and stayed down for hours - then, I had not installed anything at all, however I had installed using the Installing NodeBB for Dummies.
As for destroying it, I did what was recommended to be via DO support.
I'm not familiar with command lines - i dual boot with linux but rarely use it - so really the whole thing is a huge learning curve for me

@a_5mith said:

@julian Ahhh, thought he meant DO. Amended for incorrectness.

I'm a girl ...
Digital Ocean is where I am hosted and yes I was told to just delete and start over and that I needed a bigger droplet size..
,/nodebb restart looks like it was doing something - but it never came back online

Also the first time, when it went offline - i had nothing installed. No plug ins or anything. I simply got it runinng - at about 4am, lol. Went to sleep, got up maybe 4 hours later and it was gone..
This time I put in Forever and a few other things to keep it running -- and as test I did a server restart and everything came back up on it's own . I thought woot! Awesome, Forever Service is auto restarting nodebb Then I played with it a bit, mainly just changed theme (love cucina!) - added mail thingy because I had read that that was the plug in to use-- and it was still fine for another half hour or so then suddenly when i went from one page to another it was gone. restarting it in root didnt work - nothing.
So now it's destroyed and Im wary about trying again because I think it really might be out of my league. Ive used MyBB most of my forum years - really wanted to do something different this time round.

support at DO told me it was best to destroy the droplet and start over (and suggested my 512 ram would be too small to run Nodebb)
I don't know how to fix the errors because I can't get my forum online to deactivate and uninstall the plugins.
My first install was based on psychobunnies tut that I had found when searching 'installing NodeBB'
that was outdated it seems - and I had a really really hard time installing it.
It was up and running. I was so thrilled. Then the next day I woke up and it was gone. Support was unable to help me and told me to look at NodeBB documentation.
Then above, once finding out that it was outdated info and getting a link to the newer installation - I started over. Much easier this time - but still must have missed soemthing because two hours later it was down. However initially ./nodebb restart worked.
Now it does not. So - droplet destroyed I will try again. I know the docs are simple - but for me it is quite foreign. I was proud of myself for getting ghost running

@a_5mith do you have a suggestion for keeping the site online? Should I reinstall Forever Service? (which seems different than the Forever Daemon suggested here https://docs.nodebb.org/en/latest/running/ ) - right now ill deal with the mandrill - it was an optional plug in in the ACP so I thought it would be good to install it
still won't come up
wasn't sure whether to use ./nodebb start or node app - tried both.
./nodebb start seems to indicate the process went fine but still down.
node app gave me this:

I think I'll just delete the droplet again.
ill create a new user -sudo and install it in that directory.

Yes, that would be great. ugh... have to do it again? lol this hurts my brain
I also want to install it into a domain this time. Is that able to be done while installing it? Or is there something else I have to do. I might as well just destroy the other droplet and create new.
(Digital Ocean said I should be using a larger package for the NodeBB - but I had read that the 512 would be enough, especially with not having a user base)

It was installed in root - before I created another user.

@Tiki - not that I recall, no.

alright, so server is restarted. I think I have supervisor installed - did have the Forever Service but removed it.
went to the directory - entered ./nodebb start - but still not working.

Yes, Im quite sure the added user was done correctly -

I'll restart the server.

i haven't used it much because I can't right click/paste into it.
So, I did that, went into the correct directory and did as you said and it still says servers unavailable

edit it wont recognize the commands if I log in as other than root - not sure if that is the norm.

ive been using putty, does it matter which one I go to?

It's down again. It was doing well. It made it through a restart and set itself back up.
I installed the Forever Service --
but now its down again. Forever service isnt starting it, ./nodebb start isn't starting it.
I was just about to work on getting the site onto a domain - and then it was gone
http://107.170.196.59:4567
What is causing it to drop off like that, and what can I do to stop it?

Great - well all is good. I just have to figure out how to stop it from shutting down when the server goes down - requiring the manual restart. Ill keep looking through the docs - thank you for the help .

Okay so I went through again and found where I had missed something.
The forum is up and running. However there were some 'warns' - do I need to do something to correct these?

(im really sorry everyone )

So, I destroyed the droplet and started fresh with the tutorial provided - when it came to the end I ended up:

@psychobunny - LOL
yes, going through it I hit LOTS of snags
Luckily i had a friend who was taking me through the discrepancies. He reminded me that without PM2 it wouldnt stay running and told me to install it. I forgot and instead was poking about the forum, checking out the various things it could do and was very impressed. then woke up and it was gone.
When attempting to start nodeBB (now that PM2) is installed, I get this

I'll go look at the other tutorial.

birchwind@NodeBB:~$ birchwind@NodeBB:~$ ./nodebb start
birchwind@NodeBB:~$: command not found
birchwind@NodeBB:~$ -bash: ./nodebb: Is a directory

Is what I get when I do that - I just realize I think I forgot to install PM2
(embarassing)update installed PM2 but still getting command not found.

I was excited after many fumbles and many questions to a coder friend to see my NodeBB forum up and running. I installed it at Digital Ocean.
However this morning I went to the forum to start getting it going, and it was gone. Said servers could not connect.
I have submitted tickets - and am told I need to restart the application. All I can find to do that is in the 'Node for Dummies' (which had me totally stumped do to the node->nodejs switch) was
psychobunny@mynodebb:~/mynodebb$ node app - which isn't working for me.
I am embarassedly tech challenged - and before someone tells me I have no business trying to set up on a vps if I am challenged in such a way please know I am trying this as a learning experience.