@scottalanmiller said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

@Joykiller said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

I personally hate Discourse due to their docker wrapper. but thats me.

Oh gosh, that would pretty much turn me away right there. Docker is great for devs, but makes little sense for production operations. Tends to come from shops that are run by devs and have little operational knowledge or experience. We just had a discussion about that last week in our forum: https://mangolassi.it/topic/19577/docker-for-production-use-of-third-party-software/

Docker is for lamers who don't know how to be system admins

And, of course, rapid development. When Docker first started making it's appearance I embraced it but was later aghast when folks started routinely deploying to production, and predicted to some buddies that some security nightmares were just around the corner... And they were.

But enough Docker bashing. I looked at Discourse long, long ago, in a far away galaxy (well, in Internet time, anyways). Ruled it out right away for following (admittedly highly opinionated) reasons:

• Docker centric: Now that I am primarily only on my own projects, I am free to abandon Linux in favor of what I consider to be superior OS's like FreeBSD and SmartOS. Nothing personal but platform lockin equates to vendor lockin. And that just ain't freedom enough for me

• Rails vs. NodeJS: Are you kidding? Was an early adopter of Rails back, circa 2003/4 or so? It rocked at that time as an alternative to then php stuff sporting the serious security hole of the day/week. Or so it seemed - php was pretty sketchy for a while there. Fast forward a decade and a half and it's freakin' no contest! Rails is all but history/legacy, at least in my mind.

• Main Dev Heads: Cool vs kind arrogant asshats (sounds like that may have changed). This was immediately off putting and I was kind of surprised Discourse became so popular, but I guess that's one thing fame will help you with.

So... note to the NodeBB devs:

Please do keep doing what YOU do best and do not worry too much about feature parity w/what, in my view, is an inferior, non starter platform just because they've got a few extra bells, whistles, and/or mindshare. Popularity more oft than not does NOT equal technical superiority but rather merely demonstrates whos' the better con men. Err.. marketing team....

Now obviously I do not mean to preclude a bit of cross pollination when it makes sense. But I have been around long enough to observe FOSS project loose their vision in the quest for "Feature Parity" with some perceived competition. So, just weighing in w/my $0.02 to encourage you to stay true to your vision. Cuz it's been workin' pretty good fer' me ;D

And finally, in closing, the astute may have noticed I enjoy making tongue in cheek comments from time to time for the humor value. Don't get yer' beak too tweaked, eh? It's not a religion for me.

Spot on Julian. You have discovered something many have known for decades but lacked the discipline and/or capability to practice in ever increasingly hectic world full of deadlines, phb demands, etc. Be interesting case study to observe uptake now that it has a cool name. Seriously.

I shall echo your sentiments wholeheartedly. Wanna really bend yer' noodle? Go smart phone free for a few days. Then a week.... Semi retired here and not carried one for a few years now. Very liberating to be free and I have had more than a few confide that they envy me. Having recouped more time you now have time to make plans, think creatively, etc.

It has long been a personal mantra of mine to read some print material regularly. Internet only tends to make one's concentration a bit too hyper after a period. Yer' brain needs longer articles and chapter books.

Try it. You might like it.

Just an update to note that I've bailed on SmartOS and PostgreSQL due to too many bumps in the road in favor of sticking with a well supported platform. Which pretty much translates to: "what the dev heads are using...".

I use fbsd for our in house stuff that I keep updated via build server and internal lan. When I need cloud scale smartos or linux are the best options. To wit I have not even tried fbsd and pgsql so cannot weigh in there.

Thanks for all the insights. I'll probably be back to bug ya' before too long.

o/

@rivalite said in nodebb allows users to change the skin and save this appearance?:

.. snip...

Hello, I just discover nodebb.
I have a few questions:
1.nodebb allows change the skin like Discourse?

Admin Control Panel -> Appearance -> Themes/Skins.

Four themes shipped. Sixteen or so skins.

2.Also, I just realize nodebb uploaded my image attached to this post, to imgur. I have to pay on imgur or somewhere for this feature?

No. You can host your images locally. Offloading to imgur is a possibility, but not necessity.

3. is there a free spanish translation?

No clue.

4.how many free skins are available?

No clue. Sixteen included w/default install. At least on 12.x

5. Is it possible migrate from xenforo 2.x ?

Probably. But likely to be a headache for the uninitiated. You may want to explore contracting some expertise.

6.I just signup here using an email from https://temp-mail.org/ . Is there a spam filter to don't allow users signup with https://temp-mail.org/ ? This spam filter is free?

No clue w.r.t. temp-mail.org. NodeBB does include some more generic protections. See e.g. nodebb-plugin-spam-be-gone.

Thanks so much!

You're welcome. Enjoy!

@omega said in automatic temporary ban of a troll user with minus X votes:

@gotwf said in automatic temporary ban of a troll user with minus X votes:

First off: Lot of good discourse in this thread. Lame pun intended.

@omega said in automatic temporary ban of a troll user with minus X votes:

....

Disagree w/above though. Too much added complexity. KISS.

Tough crowd, always with the tomatoes... try this one:

Let the Mods be Mods, let the Users be Users and Admins be King & Queen, forum developers could be Heros!

Granted it's more BOWIE than KISS but you get the point right?

Oooh, la, la!!! Good one. Yeah, I'll take Bowie. Had the good fortune to see Bowie live way back in the day. Spectacular showman. Indeed. Followed Stevie Nicks. But I digress....

Maybe you missed that I got your point. At least w.r.t. the root causes of the issue. My point is that AI is not the solution for all things because AI, by its very nature, lends itself to becoming gamified and one consequently finds themselves in a never ending bot arms race.

A community needs to behave like an actual community and help the good guys do their jobs policing the bad guys. We need the human factor because we need the human touch and human oversight. And hopefully some human hard won wisdom as well.

The larger the community the more mods, etc. required. We all get that many lurk, fewer post, fewer yet are active contributors..... But hopefully.... on a prayer and one wing... good mods and helpers emerge. And it seems they will, in my experience, but it takes time - needs to develop organically and no real short cuts.

In the meanwhile... are we able to make a knob that actually works for that? With us rather than against us? Tough cookie, for sure.

Oh and can we have a better grammar-typo bots for my posts...

No.

Much thanks to @scottalanmiller for the advice and an embarrassing amount of hand holding. I'm now rocking an nginx tls proxied nodebb sporting Centos7, mongodb, and redis for session management.

I'm curious to know if any nodebb gurus are serving up nodebb via nginx https enabled reverse proxy and using modsecurity?

@ben-coyle2 No, I don't think you are being stupid or dim. Apparently there are gremlins afoot here. Post up your nginx config, eh?

@zaasmi said in Which is better NodeBB or Discourse?:

With vastly more people becoming aware of privacy concerns, ever more increasing numbers of people transitioning to VPN's, along with the plethora of free VPN providers coming online nowadays, one take any such stats with a large dose of salt, eh?

One reason I put little to no stock in "analytics". These days.

I should clarify that by "core" I actually meant core supported modules/functionalities packaged and supported as part of the base release. Poor choice of wording on my part. I am happy a camper. This would be icing on the cake for me.

@PitaJ said in How to Speed Up My Site On NodeBB?:

Have you looked at the scaling docs?

Scaling - NodeBB Documentation

I can attest that this config fairly rocks. Proxy for static content access coupled with Redis for session management. Yippie yi-yo kiyah!

OTOH: Targeting KISS, I'd just rock a single mongod and scale vertically, i.e. toss more $$ at it...

Note: Were I to run a sharded/replicated mongodb backend then I'd seriously consider having mongod handle session management and cut redis. My $0.02. You get what you pay for. If'n yer' lucky & I'm having a good day....

@Varun-Ganesh-D Seems like the mailq constipation issue could be rectified by some SMTP server side tuning, eh? Perchance do you have admin access to your SMTP relay?

/admin/plugins/email-blacklist

Enable isTempMail API check

Maybe worth a gander?

Not a fan of that new partial width default either. I find it cumbersome. Maybe a win for quick one off posts but for "long running discussion" posts w/actual content it's a loss. I like screen real estate. Why limit it's usability? Maybe keep full as default and partial as option instead?

@neron I expect if you follow those official docs you should be fine. If not, post up your logs and such and we'll get ya' sorted.

@Varun-Ganesh-D Do not know jack about Heroku but presuming you have access to a shell account:

1. Prep everything on your DO droplet, i.e. install nodejs, nginx, mongo, etc. Use the SAME versions as the Heroku stuff.
2. Shut down all the moving parts, e.g. nginx, nodebb, mongodb/redis on the Heroku instance.
3. Rsync your DO droplet w/the appropriate dirs on your Heroku instance, e.g. nodebb home, mongo/redis data dirs and /etc/whatever.conf.
4. Start up mongo/redis. Watch logs for any errors.
5. Start up nodebb. Watch logs for any errors.
6. Confirm you are able to access nodebb on e.g. port 4567.
7. Restart proxy.

Like most tech stuff, there's more than one way to do it. I presented you with one. Other's mileage may vary.

Note: I have omitted propagating updated DNS pointers but you should also ensure forward and reverse dns records are in order. Once done, you will also need to generate new TLS certificates for the DO droplet. Presuming you have access to auth DNS records:

1. Set TTL on existing Heroku stuff to something like 1hr a day or two prior to migrating.
2. After you've shut all the Heroku stuff down - update those DNS enteries with the new data.
3. Let that roll for a day or two to confirm all is well.
4. If all is not well, point auth DNS back to the Heroku stuff and bring it back online.
5. Diagnose/troubleshoot any DO issues.
6. Wash, rinse, repeat the above.
7. Once confirm all is indeed groovy, change those DNS TTL's to something more appropriate, e.g. 24-48hrs, so the rest of the world's resolvers are not hammering your auth DNS boxes.

Good luck and have fun! o/

Checking logs after an image upload: /api/post/upload might be the droid yer' looking for?

@neron Like I said, I did not read entirety but I did catch the dated nodejs and nodebb version numbers. In any case, now you have a pointer to the official docs.

Expanding a bit on the above:

Regarding issues #1 and #2: I don't think this is nginx related, as you're hitting the NodeBB app server directly via ip address on port 4567. And your config.json otherwise looks fine.

Some info that may help:

1. What version of NodeBB?
2. What version of NodeJS?
3. Did you install/setup NodeBB as your NodeBB user? Or perchance might you have done so as root?
4. Please double check permissions and ownership of your nodebb directory.

Regarding problem #3:

NodeBB itself does not handle TLS, which is all configured and managed proxy side, e.g. nginx. Presuming you are doing so (and not trying to hit nodebb app server itself directly via https), we will likely need to take a look at your nginx.conf in addition to the above.

I believe config.json "url" needs to be using https and hostname. But maybe not - just seem to have something about this sticking in the back of my mind - never tried tested TLS using IP address so I could be misremembering. Should work provided your config.json and nginx.conf are congruent.

NodeBB Console Messages/Logs:

$ cd /some/dir/nodebb

$ ./nodebb -l start

Then copy pasta the resulting spewage fer' further diagnosis, eh?

Rock on!

@neron I did not bother reading all of the docs you linked but they seem dated. Official docs are what you want to grok:

Ubuntu (Recommended) - NodeBB Documentation

Good luck and have fun!