@WhichInv thank you, it's working well for us - the problems I had with Vanilla were accumulated over time through my own faults and inexperience, other were ongoing issues with the software. I first installed Version 2.0 and instead of a stable version, opted for the latest development builds which I updated regularly. I was an early adopter of 2.1 and the dev builds of that version.

My main issues came with the database. A couple of times the normal upgrade method wouldn't quite cut it, so it was just as simple to install a fresh forum and hook up the database. Other times I used importer to fill the database. Over time, things went missing and sections of the database became corrupt and in trying to install the latest stable version, I'd somehow messed up the database trying to alter things and it was a lost cause.

The other main issue was a combination of spam and registrations. Vanilla is a magnet for spambots, and numerous measures need to be taken to ensure that they're kept at bay. Spammers 90% of the time were registering, flooding the activity feed (which they can access if you don't set permissions properly) and going, even before confirming registration.

There are detailed methods to prevent spam outlined in the forum at vanilla, but it eventually got so unwieldy that it put off registrations. For example, to register we had a "are you human" question (a sum), a recaptcha, username, password and "why do you want to join" question, on top of email validation, Stop forum spam, Akismet... so either new users were put off (unless they used SSO) or locked out of using the forum.

Then, for almost 5 months last year we were unaware people couldn't register because there was an issue with recaptcha; it didn't show on the registration page (that was a theming issue), I thought there wasn't one there and no-one could register because they couldn't see it to fill it in!

That's not to say I wouldn't recommend Vanilla - it is excellent, and has a wealth of plugins to get things done, with a busy support community - if you set it up properly.

I am enjoying NodeBB and though I promised I wouldn't use something in development again, I have been pleased with both its features and ease of use for our users - I wanted something similar enough to Vanilla for them to adopt.

@exodo said:

been working on emoji support
hope you like it

@drew

Imgur

Would love this. Splitting the emoji up into categories is also a great idea.

Today, I made the ultimate schoolboy error. I backed up my server, started a new droplet on DigitalOcean (I'd messed mine up to the point this was quicker), and started the process of installing Node and everything else.

All fine. Until I realised I'd forgotten one small thing.

dump.rdb.

Yes - I'd backed everything up but the database.

And due to me slacking from storing backups from July last year, I now face restarting SPFLForum from scratch. Or July, but given it's a football forum any posts then are largely irrelevant.

Don't be like Danny.

Back up your databases.

I currently use TwitterFeed to do mine. It's been around a few years and has some good options for filtering and when to fetch topics and so on. Also caters for Facebook and LinkedIN, though I can't say i've had much experience trying them. It uses your RSS feeds to get new topics.

Personally I'd prefer a built-in option but it does the job.

Redactor is one of the best plugins. Would love to see it updated.

Any forum I've run which has had a "chat box" or "shout box" installed has had topic activity plummet. Unless you're running an extremely busy site, I'd advise against it. However, it does probably suit some websites and many may find use for it.

Users find it popular, but for me it takes away the point in having a forum system. Conversations aren't saved for later; they're not indexed by search engines and they're notoriously difficult to moderate.

There's a couple of guides to do it various ways. I'm not on a pc or I'd share my links I have bookmarked, but perhaps a rough guide on doing it.

Quick way:

Use a one-click install for WordPress. Set up your WordPress site.
Install Nginx on your server, configure to replace Apache.(optional!)
Install NodeJS and all you need to run NodeBB using below link.

Long, but best way:

Follow above guide or another to install NodeBB. Then for WordPress, you'll need to add PHP and other necessities via the console to your lemp stack, drop WordPress in a directory, point Nginx to it, install your blog.

The former method is far simpler if you don't want the hassle of trying to work through issues with installing WordPress on a server not configured perfectly for it (which there's always some), the latter gives more control and understanding of the setup. It also means you'll be able to identify problems quicker if you know where things are.

If doing the quick way, replacing Apache with Nginx is optional but recommended. Either way you'll have to configure either to point your subdomain and domain to the correct places. Not difficult as there's loads of topics covering them on here.

Sorry this isn't in great detail, I'll get on tomorrow with links for you.

Each post has an icon to share on social networks - on this forum (using the Persona theme) there's an icon to the far-right of the post with 3 dots stacked on one another. Click it to choose to share on Facebook, Twitter of G+.

On Lavender theme there's a cog button under a post which when clicked offers the same options.

I'm changing our site name, and domain. Is it just the config file I need to alter for this to happen?

The server is staying the same and I'll be fine with the Apache side of things. Just wondered if anywhere else on the forum installation itself needs changed.

Ta!

You might be best to install a one-click LEMP stack, then follow the above guide, (except the stuff already installed) to add NodeJS, NPM, Redis and NodeBB.

That way you're already set up for WordPress with PHP & SQL to add right after it.

Just an update: spflforum.com will be closing fully in about 11 days (it's all but shut now, almost everything removed). Just so you don't have a dead link in there when I shut the site down.

Redactor is one of the best plugins. Would love to see it updated.

@Dawid-Glomba said in Who is using NodeBB?:

http://crox.pl/

Really like the way you've adapted the theme. Simple, but very effective.

Unless anyone is going to start ripping other people off there's unlikely to be any doors being burst open by feds.

As a British Scottish person, that felt odd saying "feds".

I currently use TwitterFeed to do mine. It's been around a few years and has some good options for filtering and when to fetch topics and so on. Also caters for Facebook and LinkedIN, though I can't say i've had much experience trying them. It uses your RSS feeds to get new topics.

Personally I'd prefer a built-in option but it does the job.

I'm thinking that by defining a background in that template it's showing fine (and looks great), however in the others (categories, recent, etc) it's not been told not to display it.

Would defining no background image specifically on those templates - or a template which all use - not eliminate it?

There might be an easier route, but that's how i'd assume it's staying there.

I use Persona but Lavender is great. The Material theme is an excellent theme too.

On this forum, there's just a bank of social media buttons and the copyright notice, which is just HTML with links.

I've just recreated the social media buttons on my own site, and I'll post how to add them horizontally, lined up. It might not be what you're after, but it'll at least show you.

Facebook & Twitter's buttons infamously don't sit well together, and you need to get them side-by-side. So this will explain how to do that.

Social media button alignment

You need to grab the code for your Facebook and Twitter buttons from their sites.

Edit theme

First of all, the Facebook code has two sections. There's a script to be called in the Body tag of the forum's theme HTML. You'll need to add that to header.tpl in your theme folder. Paste it in after:

<body class="{bodyClass}">

Save, and exit.

Open a new HTML Widget in ACP > Extend > Widgets and add to Global Footer. Now, I'm adding a couple of div containers to hold each button, with another wrapping them both up.

If you add the official Twitter and Facebook buttons, as they are, they don't align properly. So I added some code.

The structure looks like this:

 <div class="social">
    <div class="twitter">Add your Twitter button code in here</div>
    <div class="facebook">Add your Facebook button code in here</div>
</div>

So, for my forum, the code looks like this:

<div class="social">
    <div class="twitter"><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlyAnExcuse" class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="false">Follow @OnlyAnExcuse</a><script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');</script>
</div>
    <div class="facebook">
        <div class="fb-like" data-href="https://facebook.com/OnlyAnExcuse" data-layout="button_count" data-action="like" data-show-faces="true" data-share="false"></div>
    </div>
</div>

Once that's done, save your widgets page. Still one bit to do.

Styling it

Go to ACP > Appearance > Custom HTML/CSS, and choose Custom CSS

I used the following code to line up the buttons, space them a little and centre them.

.social {
text-align:center; 
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
} /* Aligns the buttons in the centre of the page */

.twitter {
display: inline-block;
vertical-align: middle;
margin:4px 4px 0 0;
} /* Aligns buttons next to each other. Margin compensates for misaligned buttons */

.facebook {
display: inline-block;
vertical-align: middle;
}

That's that done. You should have two social media buttons aligned together like those at the bottom of the page. If you add more (pinterest or G+ for example), add another class, and copy the display and vertical-align over to them. Use margin to align if required.

The Copyright text

You can use a Text widget in the Footer area, or HTML. Entirely up to you. I used HTML.

ACP > Extend > Widgets > add the HTML widget to footer.

Code:

<div class="social">Copyright &copy; 2016 <a href="OnlyAnExcuse.com">OnlyAnExcuse.com</a></div>

As you can see, I just reused the "social" class for centering the text.

You can use bootstrap if you're just wanting to add simple html footers with content.

Check my site, i've added this to give three even columns in an HTML widget in the footer area.

You could change classes and style it as you wish afterwards. Here's a responsive three column footer.

 <div class="row">
   <div class="col-sm-4">Column One!</div>
   <div class="col-sm-4">Column Two!</div>
   <div class="col-sm-4">Column Three!</div>
</div>

Bootstrap reference: https://getbootstrap.com/examples/grid/

See it on my forum now:

http://spflforum.com/

As for adding widget areas to a theme, that's another thing entirely - but I don't see it being difficult.

@julian it's really only noticed when typing a long post or copying quotes from a newspaper article in, most posts are short so it's not a big issue.