@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
https://i.imgur.com/GBtuMvj.png

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:

http://www.blogsynthesis.com/install-nodebb-on-digitalocean/

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.

Okay, so I think i've got somewhere. Time will tell if it works, but any errors have been cleared up in my Redis log file when restarting it.

Should anyone encounter the same issues, here's how I fixed the errors in the redis log as posted above. I'm using Ubuntu.

• I've added a 1GB swap file - this is pretty simple to do, and the link is to Digital Ocean. I've gone for a smaller swap file than my memory for now (which is 2GB).
• Fixed the vm.overcommit_memory problem - The error log (see above) gave perfect advice on which file to edit and then a redis reboot, editing etc/sysctl.conf and rebooting
• THP (Transparent Huge Pages) fix:

Entered these commands into the terminal:

echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled 
echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag

Then edited /etc/rc.local to include the following, which disable THP on reboot:

 if test -f /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled; then
   echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled
      fi
 if test -f /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag; then
 echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag
     fi

Note - I added these before the line which said:

exit 0 

Now, normally there's a crash through the night, so i'll update tomorrow if there's any further problems. But thanks @baris for the advice on a swap file, and hopefully if it all works someone else will find it useful.

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.

The firefox issue has been resolved. Thanks guys!

@TiaZzz I agree. Conversation should be positive - what we can do rather than what we're not doing.

@ViolentCrumble that happened to me the last two updates. Restarted the forum from ACP, refreshed the browser, went back to ACP and it updated.

@watomsk said:

Can this plugin work even if Wordpress and NodeBB are in different servers (DO droplets), or do they have to be installed in the same server?

Yes, this worked for me, different droplets on same domain. Currently it links a WordPress install with a NodeBB forum both on separate domains though on the same droplet.

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!

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".

If you're using 0.8.x, there's a "revert" button on bottom-right of skins page (looks like an undo or back button).

It resets the skin to default.

Here it is on my phone.

Our forum at OnlyAnExcuse.com has moved to http://www.spflforum.com

In mobile, if you write a longer post than the screen size, you can't move up or down to edit. For example, on my Samsung A3, you can't highlight text outwith what's viewable on screen, or even move your text input area to find text that's not there.

For short posts it's fine, for longer it's better to type on the memo or notes app then copy/paste it in.

That's using both default composer now on 1.0.2 and Redactor when we had it installed pre-1.x.x

Thanks @psychobunny I tried it in Chrome and it's fine in that, in Firefox though it's still messed up, so I think it's definitely the browser. Cleared browser cache and it's still the same - visit via link it's messed up, reload it's gone.

I checked the stylesheet source on both but it's identical. Clearly some browser mischief going on here.

EDIT: seems to be fine now. No idea what was causing that.