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This is my first time on this forum and boy, am I happy to find this.
I have been hunting for the best forum engine for over a month. It has almost become an addiction. I decided to go with Vanilla a week ago but soon found out that the best of Vanilla is for their hosted service which is not cheap. I have used vBulletin & IPB and as a result grown tired of conventional forum software. This is actually the first time that I would be truly wowed. This is amazing, guys! Keep up the great work!
@trevor said:
@Kamal-Patel Basically what I've read in a nutshell is:
"Well I'm looking for an alternative to NodeBB for the upcoming project I'm trying to create."
"I've tried a whole bunch of nice forums out there, but none of them are a fit for me."
"NodeBB isn't fully-featured enough for my needs at this time."
"I need badges or else."Well currently for me as it stands, I am in the same boat as you minus the "trying to find an alternative" part, so I share your view point. Sometimes I feel there are priorities that are a bit more important than others but seem to get deferred for something that is really not too important. You have to keep in mind they are only three guys so it's only so much they can do at a time. The work they've done so far is quite amazing so kudos to that. I remember when NodeBB was in its infancy. Many, many bugs, and very bland. Feels like less than a year to be honest.
However, I'm sure it will come around sooner or later. But hey, if it doesn't suite your individual timeframe then I'm sorry to hear that.
I like this post very much.
When we talk about forums that are out there with tens of hundreds of plugins, it is that very same reason why the architecture of those forums are so stuck. It would cost too much to change the core engine and at the risk of losing their user base. As a result, many of them are just plugging along hoping to further extend the life of their engine. However, those engines are inherently dated and slow.
I would rather work with an engine that's on the bleeding edge and with little plugins but with the right foundation to make use of modern web tools. This is why NodeBB is so attractive. I personally think that it has enough plugins to build a vibrant forum. It has all the fundamentals that one would need. The main criteria that I was searching for in forum solution is simple core and elegant design. The presentation of NodeBB is the best I've seen yet - it allows for simple and intuitive interaction by users. It is clean, yet dynamic. It almost feels like I've just discovered gold in its purest form.
@trevor Total typo there.. I meant PM, Trevor. The IM is great. PM is what I was referring. You can't substitute PM with IM. IM doesn't have ability to archive conversations based on set topic. It classes everything as one giant conversation. But PMs serve different purpose. I'm glad @nik has made that point eloquently too. I think it would be a great step forward for NodeBB to focus more on functional tools within forum and ACP. You only have to look at the list of forum solutions out there to see that 90% of them offer PM out of the box. Discourse included - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software#Features.
Hey Julian,
I agree that you can't include every single feature requests in a product. I know all that too well because every other client that I meet with has a grand idea that would revolutionize my security product which of course is already the only leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant. It is virtually impossible to listen to every FR especially when most of them are "nice to haves". You can't please the world.
But over the years, we realized that functional features that should be implemented but left out created opportunities for our competitors to try and take the backdoor into an account. As a result, functional features that actually solve problems often get escalated to deal breaker level with real revenue riding on them.
When I relate that experience to NodeBB development, I believe there are core features missing that still prevent full adoption of this engine by major forums out there. I've been following this project for over a year and done enough research to understand what the core requirements are and from my experience of administering a forum for over 6 years.
To be clear, I am forever in awe of NodeBB's engine. It remains the best that I thus far come across due to its sheer speed and excellent rendering of posts. But there are gripes that always become quickly obvious every time I have visited the site. These possibly slow the adoption of this great product. I'm going to be very blunt here, but I hope it is seen as productive rather than troll event.
The layout on the homepage is very messy The layout is wonky at best. Lack of alignment of the objects make very hard to find anything worthy of clicks. If I go to https://community.nodebb.org as a new user, I expect to find the best native rendering out of the box. Most adopters don't have enough time to be playing with code just to get a decent look out of the box. They want it functional layout from day zero.
Lack of "Real" Private Messaging System (Inbox)
I brought up this point last year, but the response that I got back was that chat does exactly the same thing and doesn't need to be evaluated. That assertion to me is simply flat out wrong if you have a successful forum. Heck, even Twitter has a PM system.
What is wrong with the current chat system on NodeBB? For one, there is no subject line. Two, messages are kept in linear form even if the topics being discussed are not related. For instance, when I try to send Julian a message, I click on chat, and I'm seeing chat messages from 8 months ago like I would on instant messaging app. To me, that is major fail on messaging system for a community and it astounds me that this is now in beta 7 yet never discussed as a necessary tool. I should be able to start a new message with defined title.
Lack of simple way to list sub categories
Again , this is one of the points that avid members here fight over as not necessary. I keep seeing workarounds such as tags used to replace sub-categories. Why the conflict? Tags solve completely different from presentation standpoint. You cannot replace categorization through form listing with tags.
Stop reinventing the wheels
What initially sold NodeBB to me as I was researching best forum engine to use for my projects was core engine. But the lack of wiliness to acknowledge the aforementioned functional features always pegged me back. Those are not nice to have features. They are essentially what most forums are built on which solve real forum problems.
Now, it could be that I simply don't understand the mission statement of NodeBB as a product. I wouldn't rule that out. But if you are thinking of displacing the likes of Vanilla, IPB, XenForo etc, then it would be great to at least provide the fundamental features that those engines have out of the box, then start to build on what they don't have to give NodeBB a real edge that would take it into the next level that would reward the hard work that your team have put in.
@psychobunny said:
awesome
would be pretty cool to see a lot of gaming related forums powered by NodeBB, all thanks to you
This is exactly what brought me to NodeBB. I am working on a project to create a new gaming site because I became completely disenfranchised with most forum based game sites out there. I find the technologies too static for today's web.
I have been doing great deal of research to find out more about nodebb and all the dependencies and I am somewhat confident of creating a platform to bring forum interaction to modern standard.
@a_5mith Don't get me wrong, I totally love the chat system. However, I don't think it replaces PM. I see the chat system as no different to Google Chat. Yet I still email more important topics to the same chat audience.
Here are the reasons why I think chat should not be viewed as a replacement for PM:
Those are the reasons I can think of for now.
@a_5mith said:
@cytrax It's your forum, if my forum got everything they asked for id never have a day off in my life. I recently had someone ask for a way of hovering over a thread and seeing the usernames of every user who'd posted in that thread because they didn't want to read posts from a specific few users. But didn't want to use the ignore feature. shrug
Could the chat not utilise localStorage in html5? Brainstorming here.
Nah.. I don't think it's a matter of just giving users what they want. I think there are core features that drive any community and the very best of them have PMs and a form of calendaring. PM especially is fundamental to these communities. Not even Facebook would become what it is today without that feature. I don't think deciding to do without PM gives any advantage to NodeBB but rather puts it at a disadvantage against other engines. You only have to read through this list to see that - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software
@psychobunny said:
Yeah I could see why people who are used to the traditional way wouldn't be too pleased. I see us building some sort of hybrid compromise that takes the best of both worlds, rather than build a whole separately different system, if you know what I mean
@baris said:
The current chat feature has no difference than a PM system, the messages are kept forever. It's the front end that just displays the last 50 messages and the presentation looks like its a chat system. It can be themed and/or moved to a separate page and labeled 'private messages'.
That would be awesome! If the Chat feature actually keeps the message in the backend, it would be great to be able to thread that out in a private system of some kind.
