Hello NodeBB community, I'm here to introduce you a brand new theme that will available for all of you when it's ready
But first things first a little disclaimer.

Disclaimer

Thanks for all the support you showed up for galaxygraph.fr forum and it's theme. Unfortunately we won't be releasing the nodebb-theme-deep-space theme for several reasons.

• The theme was thought only for GG community and because of that doesn't reply to the needs a NodeBB common user may have.
• It was done only in the purpose of serving some custom features and a slick look that go pair with what the community is about : graphism.
• I consider that the theme is not stable and modular enough to serve another NodeBB community.
• And finally after all the effort we've put in it to be unique, it would be kinda sad to find it elsewhere.

Bad news, means also good news to balance and that's exactly what I'm doing today. Let me introduce you nodebb-theme-minimalism

Minimalism

Here's what I planned to do, you can see how I work for creating the theme, what I want here is some feedback because I want this theme to be for the community and I wan't to know if it's worth it or no and finally if I should do it.
Also I count on you to find a new name for the theme since it's not that minimalistic or say that I'm wrong and stick with it.
I hope you'll like it, without more attending here it is

click for fullsize.

I will reuse some of the features I developed for galaxygraph (the box with post likers for instance)

NodeBB Topic Color

A NodeBB Plugin to add some colors to the topics titles.

Installation

As simple as that :

npm install nodebb-plugin-topic-color

Usage

1. After installation go to the ACP and enable the plugin.
2. Choose the groups that will be able to colorify their topics. Or create the Bucket group and put some users in it.
3. The magic happens with this simple instructions :

If you want some red you have the choice to use :

• Hexadecimal colors code like #ff0000 or even #f00
• RGB values rgb(255,0,0)
• And finaly css color codes red

To use it it's pretty simple :

%(color)[Text]

Screenshots

Create your groups. Add the bucket one if you want to manage exactly who is able to colorify their topics or if the users are in a group system :

Choose the groups you want to be able to use the colorify topics title feature :

This :

Will become this (note that Test tried to fool the plugin but unlucky for him there's groups permissions) :

And if there's no group selected don't worry the titles will be as clean as before (this could be a way to disable the feature but you must keep the plugin activated) :

Here's a new plugin I did to change/create custom headers, thanks to @Xevious for the tips and enjoy it

NodeBB Custom Header

This plugin allows you to set a list of images that will be displayed randomly with a nice crossfade effect on your forum as backgrounds. The first purpose is to create custom header banners but you can target anything and do as you want.

Installation & Setup

Get the latest version of the plugin with

npm install nodebb-plugin-custom-header

Then go to the ACP > Plugins > Custom Header
There will be some examples of how to use the plugin.

First you need to define a jQuery selector, it can be anything you want in order to catch NodeBB themes or your own.
Then it's obvious you just gives the links to the images you want to use.

Example & Tips

Let's say you want to change the background of the NodeBB navbar.
Youd need to target #header-menu
Then create the list of images you want to use.

Tips :

• The plugin uses the background-color of the element to create the fade effect when you come on the forum, then captures the ajax events to change the background during navigation with a crossfade effect.
• Change the default css to have something that suits your needings (obviously white icons are better on images than grey ones).

Here's an example of a custom navbar

Here's the result on a custom theme to give you an overview of what that plugin is able to do.

First image

And another one

I'm coming from phpBB, myBB forums softwares and I'm kinda surprised by some missing features in NodeBB. So I thought I'll make a list of these features I would love to see incorporated to nodeBB.

Sub-categories

I would love to see them, forums get messy when there's no ability to group categories by theme.

• Theme
  • Category

And even further

• Theme
  • Category
    • Sub-category

Actually I'm using this three levels on my forums and I don't think I would be able to use only categories to fake it. I've seen that I can change categories classes but finally it's hacking for a feature that should be there in my opinion.

Custom Profiles

I know that my members love to see a little thing written under their names to complement their profile or just add some personalty. Something like 'The God Father'.
And further I think that custom fields would be a nice implementation and maybe something that could be better than on phpBB. I'm thinking of the profiles custom fields like group of images ect...
Something that could be awesome is to have a ACF (Wordpress plugin) like in order to allow us to add as many custom fields in profiles like 'Teams' is 'Text Input', 'Team Logo' is 'Image chosen in a list' ect. With some permissions to allow only Administrators to edit them.

Talking of permissions I haven't found yet if there's a moderator kinda thing I don't want my moderators to have the same rights as administrators for example (admin panel access).

These could be some nice features to see implemented in the next versions of NodeBB.
I don't think copying what is existing is the right solution though but some features are necessary for communities in my opinion even more when the users were used to.

I have some ideas of features but I definitely see them as plugins and I guess I'll give it a try.

@arasbm As a recent NodeBB explorer (and NodeJs) I'll suggest you to start with the harder of plugins and themes and it's plugins.
As I understand the thing :

• Plugin is a custom behaviour that could work on every NodeBB forum and that is not based on the theme. It should be configurable (if needed) and not conflict. It try to solves a problem that is experience related.
• Theme is how you want your NodeBB forum to look like. It's easier to go inside because it's based on a sublime api and it's just css/html and and a bit of JS. If you want you theme to create a custom behaviour that is only applicable to itself then you can because themes are created and treated like plugins.
  You can take a look at the api on every NodeBB page with {origin}/api/{path}

Both plugins and themes can make the use of the api and write content to use after. Take a look of the existing ones and you'll have a good point of view to start developing you owns.

@Tanner
How to make the sidebar full height all the time
Make sidebar retract when user clicks anywhere on page

I have done this two things.
For the first one I've cheated :
My body has the same background as my sidebar and there's a min-height of 100%. The rest of the page is in a page div container.

And for the second point it's a bit tricky.

$('body').on('click',function(event){
	if ($(this).hasClass('open-menu')) {
		if (!$(event.target).is('.navbar-default.header') && !$(event.target).parents(".navbar-default.header").is(".navbar-default.header") ) {
			$('.menu').toggleClass('close-menu');
			$('body').toggleClass('open-menu');
		}			
	}
});

You need to bind a click event on your body. Check if the sidebar is open (open-menu class in my case). And then see what was the event target and if it's different from the navbar (first condition) or from the childs of the navbar (second condition) which is tested by checking that the parent exist. And then doing your thing to close. In my case I'll alter my menu icon + I remove the class on body.

Hope that can help you

I kinda like it but I have a few questions/remarks

• Home : Why are the bars on the category sometimes up sometimes down ?
• Home : You can now add a category to favorites and like it ? Or is it a home with topics previews ?
• Profile : Is the background banner a new feature or theme based ? I guess you did that with filter:user.custom_fields
• Profile : The timeline thing is a good idea.
• Topic : The box with the users is who responded to the thread ? (new feature ?)
• Topic : Titles it seems YEAH
• Topic : The new way to navigate between posts is genius.
• I don't feel the mix of flat/clean design and web2.0 one (the gradients with shadows and rounded corners) it has a old and not so clean feeling which for a forum of the future is kinda disappointing.

Good job on this one I think some UI need rewamping but the features here are nice and I want them

New version 0.1.0
Updated for NodeBB v0.6.0 compatibility.

@colornote
You have two choices :

• Edit home.tpl in the template page and change this code by this one :
  <div class="<!-- IF categories.class -->{categories.class}<!-- ELSE -->col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12<!-- ENDIF categories.class --> category-item" data-cid="{categories.cid}" data-numRecentReplies="{categories.numRecentReplies}">
<div class="<!-- IF categories.class -->{categories.class}<!-- ELSE -->col-md-4 col-sm-6 col-xs-12<!-- ENDIF categories.class --> category-item" data-cid="{categories.cid}" data-numRecentReplies="{categories.numRecentReplies}">

col-md-4 in place of col-md-3 This mean an item is 4 columns in a 12 columns grid (3 items per line).
And then in ACP>Categories remove ervery single custom class.

• Or you can in ACP > Categories change the custom classes with col-md-4 col-sm-6 col-xs-12 which is simpler.

New version 1.3.0
Update for NodeBB v0.6.0 compatibility
Infinite scrolling supported

@Jelena You're not pointing at the good element. It's a few childs after :
masonry = new Masonry('.row.category ul#topics-container li')
btw the .row.category ul part is not needed

Happy Birthday @julian

Problem is solved on latest master branch. Thanks a bunch

@baris You rocks
Okay so now I have a properly working plugin for all the basics which is colorify the titles. I need to clean my code a bit, update the regex (a big one but the content is a lot more easy to read).
Basically this is the teasing for v1.0.0 of the plugin expect it to come this week-end.
If I have the time I'll start to check the permissions part.

Anyway see you later hope you'll love it

I'm not 100% sure but since NodeBB uses sockets why can't you send a socket from a third party tool/app to NodeBB port and then fire your function on that socket catch ?

@Netto-Hikari I don't really see a better solution. I think what you're offering is very interesting for people searching a free host for their NodeBB server. In my case I want to control what's going on and develop on my instance, test ect so I think that's not replying to my needs. But that's not a bad thing I think my use case is rarer and that you're offering something pretty decent. I don't think it will be hard to find some people interested.

@julian That's the version I have. And it seems to be fixed (maybe a cache issue)

And so after a lot of time and tries I have finally done what I was expecting.

Upgrade to the latest version 1.0.1 (major update) which fixes some bugs and adds the groups permissions and settings from ACP.
I have updated the first post there's a lot of information and a fancy presentation check it out

For the tech part,
After trying every single hook and not retrieving the data I needed, I was going to abandon the plugin to the 0.0.2 version. But I've read somewhere on the forum (don't recall where) that there were actually an API for NodeBB by adding /api/ after the location origin. And I have to say amazing job on this guys it rocks. I was able to do what I had in mind after a lot of testing but this seems very promising for the future and I'm sure that I'll use it for my forum and maybe future plugins.
Anyway thanks a lot for the support and enjoy my plugin

@agarcia17 Basically follow & adapt what's done here
http://socket.io/get-started/chat/

For the logic :

• NodeBB is on port :4567 so you need to listen on that one.
  Localhost should be fine if your instance is on the same server else you need the server adress or dns.

• Socket emit custom_event → your trigger

• Socket on custom_event → the receiver (your function)

You can pass any data through sockets so you can easily imagine a form to fill up that you parse and the data is passed to the function.

@MatthewHawley Yes subcategories are implemented on 0.5.1 branch (future version).