@meetdilip

I'm not a developer, but NodeBB is a Node.js application, and Node.js is JavaScript.

So, no, NodeBB does not target "only premium customers who can afford a costly host."

Btw, you can get Cloud hosting that's cheaper than most shared hosting plans. For $5/month, you can get a Cloud server that comes with 512 MB of RAM and a 20 GB SSD storage. If you are really intersted, you can get one at DigitalOcean.

To get things started, here's my feature request for NodeBB 0.4.1:

A WAF (Web Application Firewall) or WAF-like feature that will give NodeBB some protection against brute-force attacks on user accounts.

If you run a server and monitor it, I'm sure you already know the number of attempts are made to forcefully log into the system using an existing user account. Now imagine the number of accounts on a platform like a NodeBB-powered forum and you can imagine the number of brute-force attacks on the system. And if you also consider that most of those user accounts will have very weak passwords, it gets even worse.

That's where a WAF with login monitor comes in. It can have other security features, but the basic ones are shown in this screenshot taken from a similar WP plugin.

@julian

I think we need to start with making the installation process pull a specific stable version, preferably the very latest stable version, during the installation process. So if NodeBB 0.3.2 is the latest stable version and I'm doing a new installation, I should be git-pulling that version during installation, not the Edge version. Once that's done, users should be discourage from running Edge on a production system.

Then we can ask plugin authors to specify what version of NodeBB their plugin is compatible with. That will help clean things up a little bit.

Great job, guys. Just update mine and it looks good.

Just one suggestion/request: On the home page, I think it's better to show the title of the latest topic than showing all that test from the latest post. Showing the topic title offers better context than what we are showing now. Also, could we make the number of lines shown configurable?

Thank you for a great job.

Mark post as best answer has not been implemented yet. There has been several requests for it, though.

@Scuzz

Bad idea. Users will just be getting security warning about an untrusted or invalid site certificate that will scare them away.

@LinSN

If you create it as a plugin, you can be sure that others will use it. Restricting posting to authenticated users is a sure way of reducing spam postings

I've observed that there is an empty logs directory in the root of a NodeBB installation. What log files are supposed to be in that directory?

And I can also see an error.log and an events.log file. Wouldn't it be better to move both files to the empty logs directory?

I was surprised to learn that registered users are allowed to post before they have verified or confirmed their email. To cut down on spurious postings, I think it'd be better to give site admin the option to allow/disallow posting before an email has been verified.

The only feature close to that in the ACP is on the Post tab of the General Settings page which ways that Allow guests to post without logging in. I think there should be one that says something like Allow registered users to post without confirming email

@meetdilip

My take on these control panels is you don't need them. You are better off managing your server from the command line than installing a control panel that you'll only use once in a while. Creating a DB, for example, takes just 3 simple commands.

@Juxtapo

The main issue I need to fix right now is the database, I can't do anything with nodebb until the database is working properly.

But running that command will likely tell you why the application is not connecting to the DB...

The fix, once the cause is determined, will likely be easier than a fresh install

@Juxtapo, Lokk though the NodeBB logs using:

sudo ./nodebb log

@Juxtapo, is MongoDB running? That error indicates that it's not.

Determine its status by typing

sudo service mongodb status

If it's not running, start it:

sudo service mongodb start

@julian said:

Ensure that the config.json still points to the same database... if it's a blank site, then NodeBB is reading an empty database...

Before upgrading, config.json was pointing to Redis DB 0. After upgrading, it's still pointing to Redis DB 0. The configured Redis password still matches.

So not sure, how to proceed from here.

@BDHarrington7, I'm on v0.6.1-15, but I think I'll skip upgrading to 0.7.x until I can get the whole site back up.

@finid, So I made the decision to disable all the plugins, now knowing which is causing the problem.

Now I can NodeBB starts fine, I can access the site, but it's a blank site. No posts or users at all. Check the uploads folders that all is intact. Also verified that the database files (.rdb and .aof) are still in place and the same size as the original site.

Any ideas @julian

Ok, so I decide to skip 0.7 and use the last known good upgrade (0.6) until I get a response on the blocking issue.

However, when I stat NodeBB, it starts, but I get a 502 Bad Gateway error when I try to access the site. From the log, I get these:

Clustering enabled: Spinning up 1 process(es).

22/7 02:00 [2356] - info: Time: Wed Jul 22 2015 02:00:28 GMT-0400 (EDT)
22/7 02:00 [2356] - info: Initializing NodeBB v0.6.1
22/7 02:00 [2356] - error: [plugins] NodeBB encountered a problem while loading plugins WRONGTYPE Operation against a key holding the wrong kind of value

Any clues?

@julian, So upgrade to 0.6 completed successfully.

However, upgrade to 0.7 almost completed. At the tail end, it failed with this message:

21/7 23:40 [30598] - info: [2015/2/23] Activating NodeBB Essential Rewards
21/7 23:40 [30598] - info: [2015/02/24] Upgrading plugins:active to sorted set
21/7 23:40 [30598] - info: [2015/02/24] Upgrading plugins:active to sorted set done
21/7 23:40 [30598] - info: [2015/02/24] Upgrading privilege groups to system groups
21/7 23:40 [30598] - info: [2015/02/24] Upgrading privilege groups to system groups done
21/7 23:40 [30598] - info: [2015/02/25] Upgrading menu items to dynamic navigation system
21/7 23:40 [30598] - info: [2015/02/25] Upgrading menu items to dynamic navigation system done
21/7 23:40 [30598] - info: [2015/05/07] Upgrading uid mappings to sorted set
21/7 23:40 [30598] - info: [2015/05/07] Upgrading uid mappings to sorted set done
21/7 23:40 [30598] - info: [2015/05/08] Fixing emails
21/7 23:41 [30598] - error: undefined

Undefined error. Perhaps the contents of the log could shed some light:

at Array.forEach (native)
    at Function.use (/var/forum/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:436:13)
    at EventEmitter.<anonymous> (/var/forum/node_modules/express/lib/application.js:187:21)
    at Array.forEach (native)
    at EventEmitter.use (/var/forum/node_modules/express/lib/application.js:184:7)
    at module.exports (/var/forum/src/routes/index.js:144:6)
    at require.exec.cwd (/var/forum/src/webserver.js:63:3)
[cluster] Child Process (9241) has disconnected
[cluster] Child Process (9241) has exited (code: 8, signal: null)
[cluster] Spinning up another process...

Any clues?

@julian, I told you, man! ~@planner died of unknown causes. But he did leave behind a boat load of bitcoins in a Swiss account. So I'm shopping for a pacific island right now

To this particular matter, I'll continue where I left off later tonigh, because the server is laready life and the upgrade uses up lots of RAM.

@julian, looks like I replied to myself instead to you

Shows how long I've used this platform...