After your friendly replies i would like to give an update. I did play with phpbb and its really nothing to go these days. It feels like stepping 20 years back compared to the nodeBB user experience.

What i am doing now is to refactor my game on base of angular2 stack and to add a a very small forum like messaging feature myself. I think this will be the best solution because it seamingless fits into my application.

You are doing a great job here and if i ever search for a real forum again i will come back

I checked out v1.x.x still having the same issue with "Cannot GET /" when switching from persona to vanilla. I think it has something to do with tests of nodebb-plugin-custom-pages but i am not sure.

I really think you should have some coding guidelines to ensure some level of code quality. A git repository without a README is just useless. As is software without some sort of test coverage - on unit and e2e level.

Im still not sure if i shall give nodebb a chance or stick to phpbb. I will play a little with phpbb and then i will make a decision.

Hi,

I am currently searching for a new forum/community software for my small online gaming community. In general, I like what you are doing here. My game is also implemented with NodeJS.

Sadly, after some days of work with nodeBB, i am frustrated. Here are some issues:

• The documentation is poor.
  • When i installed nodeBB, noone told me which branch i shall use to run a stable version. Currently i use master branch which is pretty much broken all the recent days.
  • Some essential plugins like "custom-pages" or "custom-homepage" don't have a documentation at all. The README does not help any way.
  • I cannot find any information about the upcoming (hopefully stable) version 1 release. When does it happen? Which features does it have?
• Core plugins (nodebb-theme-vanilla and nodebb-theme-persona) are broken all the time. Here is what my output.log lists as incompatible plugins with master branch:
  • nodebb-theme-vanilla
  • nodebb-plugin-mentions
  • nodebb-plugin-spam-be-gone
  • nodebb-plugin-dbsearch
• Most of the time when i make a change, i need to restart nodeBB twice. After the first attempt, the server responds with "Cannot get /".
• The customization options are very poor: Perona has nearly none, vanilla offers some few, but that's really not enough. E.g. Why is there no footer widget are in categories.tpl?

I really wonder if you have any kind of e2e testing. I would assume that core plugins run e2e tests to ensure everything works together before they are commited into master.

I mean, how do you want to provide a stable forum? The UX, okay. Its shiny in the first moments... but after some looks underneath the surface... i dont know.

Can you give me some information about your future plans to provide a stable version?

Cheers
Norman