Thanks so much, that makes sense. @PitaJ , @pichalite

The situation is I only want some people with high reputation could initialize a new post and other people could only reply to the post, is there any existed way to do it?

@teh_g Sorry, I do not have this directory.

I follow the instruction below to setup my environment
NodeBB setup

And when I try to start it as a service, below message shows

service nodebb status
● nodebb.service - NodeBB forum Documentation=http://nodebb.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nodebb.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) since Sun 2017-10-15 23:11:50 UTC; 1min 26s ago
  Process: 11592 ExecStart=/usr/bin/node loader.js –no-daemon –no-silent (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 11592 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Oct 15 23:11:50 instance-ubuntu1604 systemd[1]: nodebb.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Oct 15 23:11:50 instance-ubuntu1604 systemd[1]: Stopped NodeBB forum Documentation=http://nodebb.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.
Oct 15 23:11:50 instance-ubuntu1604 systemd[1]: nodebb.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Oct 15 23:11:50 instance-ubuntu1604 systemd[1]: Failed to start NodeBB forum Documentation=http://nodebb.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.

Below is my nodebb.service file

[Unit]
Description=NodeBB forum Documentation=http://nodebb.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
After=system.slice multi-user.target
[Service]
Type=simple
User=liangren64
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=nodebb
Environment=NODE_ENV=production
WorkingDirectory=/home/liangren64/nodebb
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node loader.js –no-daemon –no-silent
Restart=always
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Please note that when I start nodebb manually, it is all good

liangren64@instance-ubuntu1604:~/nodebb$ ./nodebb start
Starting NodeBB
  "./nodebb stop" to stop the NodeBB server
  "./nodebb log" to view server output
  "./nodebb restart" to restart NodeBB

so I do not think it is the nodebb's issue, I think maybe something wrong with my nodebb.service but I am not the profssional with systmd, so if anyone with knowledge please help me

1. You need to check your User, replace it with root and try
2. You have already set WorkingDirectory so I think you do not need to set the same route in ExecStart again.