Community

I hope I don't get accused of super bumping multiple threads tonight (really not so old threads or well not so old last post!)

On first impression, nodeBB was the ticket - without any of the technicals. It's all that matters.

It truly is all that matters. Since the majority of fourm users are not going to be technical and forum have there work cut out to drag people away from the twitters and face books of the world.

A forum can be deployed to any user base so it's application and audience is potentially as wide as you like and varied as you like, that you have to think about simple but not dumb Ui/UX and rely on the beauty of tradition, i.e. established and solid universal conventions that are universal but not afraid to push the envelope to enhance convention to the point it's at least feels innovate if not actually is.

Speed.

It's silky response. The fade out fade in transition was a genius choice, let me type that again GENIUS!

The Composer.

• It looks and is weighed better i.e. it's styled better, simple.
• It's not perfect, but it's one of the best out there.

The composer is the window to all content creation, the crucible of an entire forums everyday lifeforce. It's got to be good, it's got to always be trying to be better, by trying to be great. This is the interface that makes or breaks the user experience and thus a forum.

My UI/UX 2c:

Please consider making the composers upper top line a drag focus draggable area so it is not restricted to the black circle aligned to the left, that should really be centered (it took me too long to figure out) - it breaks a basic UI/UX expectation burned into our retinas at this point!

We have the same issue on a non NodeBB site, that was ported from phpBB like you, exactly the same vie topic link issues, but with very similar stats to what @julain posted, 80K redirect not indexed / not started and about 30K canonical not indexed / not started - over all I think approx 130K+ unindexed or not started.

I also concur with @julain - new content does appear to get indexed very quickly and if it's SEO friendly + is hot topic at that time, traffic magic happens.

@NodeHam said in Google constantly complains about nodebb forums:

We used to spend a great deal of time on SEO but found it was a never ending game with Google and could not justify spending so much time at it.

I concur also with @gotwf and @phenomlab that SEO has overtones of snake oil or it always feels like you're shooting in the dark very much like you have outlined here. I think you know the answer.

Worry about it less, do nothing to please google, keep an eye on it, and see if patterns form.

Updated a nodeBB to 1.13, all seems relatively fine, though, I was not paying attention and I updated to v1.13.4-3. - that's ok for now, seems to work.

However the ns-embd plugin is not embedding tweets, just leaving a blank blockquote. Youtube videos embed perfectly fine, so I suspect the watch + replace needs tweaking?

Watch

(?:<a.*?)?(?:https?:\/\/)?(?:twitter\.com)\/([^\/\"\s]*)\/status\/([^\/\"\s]*)(\/photo\/\d|)(?:.*?\/a>)?

Replace

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><a href="https://twitter.com/$1/status/$2?ref_src=twsrc^tfw"></a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

This is a feature I wouldn't expect in forum software, since traditionally such systems like phpBB don't have it out of the box. It also seems wrong on a base trust level even before we got to the modern era of GDPR etc. etc.

Yet Discourse has this out of the box much to my own surprise and I thought but why would you need it?

Other than tracking abuseive PM's between waring users, which could easily be stopped by the recipient being able to ban PM's form a user. I didn't initially see the valid use case.

The point was made by Atwood, Discourse creator, that for example certain types of nefarious rings might use your PM system to share illicit material undetected. Think the worst kind.

• That is a very valid point and one worth exploring.

However it's still strange being able to read anyones private messages and that users also may simply assume that their messages are private. Few think about databases and that once a person has access to a database they can in theory access any of the info but it's not frictionless access. Discourses implementation is as simple as reading your own PM.

What I felt would be a better solution, more admin friendly and simply effective at addressing the problem, would be to have a system that monitors the PM activity and volume of all user accounts.

For e.g. - A threshold is set with some criteria - then imagine a 0 post or very low post count user has more than 2 pm's a day it's reported and flagged in stats. Imagine another user has 100's of PM's per day or hour, it's flagged with more force, because such activity would be highly suspicious. A whitelist system would handle the good guys and magybe not flag (like mods) but still report their activity too, if required.

So of my 10,000 imaginary forum users how do you find the 4 or 5 who are abusing the system, with little effort but with pinpoint accuracy fast?

Second to that there could also be threshold limits set that users can only read and send x pm's per day until they clock up some rep, which would act as a massive disincentive to abuse the PM system for nefarious and illegal activities. (apologies if such a feature is already there, I'm not 100% familiar yet with all of nodeBB functionality and feature set but getting there).

Open access for admins to PM's does not mean you will easily find and therefore stop the problem. Access only helps you determine if it is a problem on a PM per PM basis, how do you even know which user acc PM's to start looking at - it is still needle in a haystack.

What you need are PM analytics as an admin in the first instance! - therefore it's not an access issue!

I find the Discourse implementation a good example of solving a real niche problem but with the wrong solution applied or at least the 50% wrong.

I would really like to see a PM report/abalytic system in nodeBB natively, as a core security feature to tackle this issue - that can auto lock crazy PM behaviour.

Warning + notices to users easily administered by default, that PM's are not publicly viewable but admin viewable if x. y and z occurs.

The crazy thing is Discourse team originally implemented this and gave moderators access.

That's just insane IMHO, even as an Admin I am not really comfortable with that once click power - it's clearly open to I would say more abuse that what it tries to solve.

@julian Cool thanks, yea poor ns-embed is not happy in 1.12.2 - I and others already flagged in that thread, still, A Great plugin!

Ok SMTP/EMAIL is fixed!

Some deeper DNS/MX work seems to have made the difference and using "encrypted" setting - initially I was using StartTLS as per email provider SMTP guide, which specified TLS - tested it again and StartTLS broke it.

Encrypted works.

@frankm

Ok great that worked, installed via CLI.

Totally forgot about it @crazycells mentioned it ages ago but it was no longer visible searching for plugin via the find-plugins in ACP.

How is this plugin long term as it seem to be archived, does this indicate no future dev, maybe it can be forked and someone can keep it alive if other plugins do not reach a solution.

I love the composer in nodeBB. However, it's rare to find anything in life that can not be pushed toward greater perfection and since composer is pushing toward perfection already - let's push a little bit more to make the difference!

On community.nodebb.org - I noticed a few extra buttons that seemed to related to the same function or kind of, then I noticed even more - why have 3 image related buttons when you can have one?

Why?

Ok, first lets strip the overlapping icons and rearrange into more logical groups:

Post Edit Tools | Link Tools | Image Tools | Custom Tool | Zen Mode

Space

Super and look at all the new found space, minimal overload is not far off, time to look at the sequential order.

Less is More in the New Order

If there ever was a more graceful flow from left to right in perfect order I have yet to see it, with less buttons in a more logical, sequential and grouped order we are pitching for less visual cognitive load.

Summary:

• Minimal without losing functionality
• Clear left to right flow and back again
• Grouping of icons by contextual function
• Establishes a logical sequence to icon groups
• Creates more space for other icons
• Sets logical order and positioning for future icon inclusion

Naturally it flows that the 3 image button functions need to be folded into a pop-up menu.

Why this is probably a better outcome is that it creates a clear focus and display of the image options to the user using one click, all on a single menu.

Currently there are 3 buttons one of which is visually ambiguous as it presents as cloud up arrow icon, which could be construed as being actionable with any file for upload.

If you wanted to push the logic of this approach further, then even the smilies icon could considered a valid target (hypothetically!) to also fold into the single image button - creating a hybrid single image button, a hybrid pop-up menu with all the visual/image elements in one place.

Please note, I am not proposing it for now but I present it to tease out the natural evolution of where this route might go and is perhaps one reduction too far for broader nodeBB deployments.

Please upvote - If you woudl like to see this in standard nodeBB.

This one ain't too bad either, you can create palettes and is very hands on too

+you can apply various type of colour blindness filters to the palette to simulate how it might be perceived.

Incredible result!

Can you maybe share with us mere mortals how many hours/days/weeks and Moz + NodeBB people were available to the project to achieve such an incredible migration result, without revealing the whereabouts of your drone army and personal droids of course!

Yes!

As outlined in the second part to this post here - I have created this dedicated topic for the purposes of pitching this new feature and functionality for composer.

A composer that can align in one click to the right of the screen - creating a split view.

I guess if people want left they can have it but the concept is being able to easily reference posts on the right and compose on the left, keeping an unobstructed view of the entire flow of the topic posts without having to minimize the compose editor.

Meet the new contextual button that would toggle between positions.

Click to toggle horizontal position:
Click to toggle right-aligned position (split view):

As an evolution of composer core feature & function, I believe the case for, is incredibly self evident.

• I'm waiting for someone to tell me this feature is already available...
• I will edit an addition this OP with summary points and extra info if required.

Please Upvote - If you want to see this as a core feature in standard nodeBB deployment.

This is a feature in Discourse, and when i first saw it years ago I thought, COOL!

Many years later, when actually interacting with the feature in Discourse. I realised it was generally a bad system because it was really a bad idea.

What problem was it actually solving?

Users not being able to moderator other users comments????

That is Chaos!

Why invite Chaos?

The problem you see it as is lack of staff to police the conversation. This is a problem for all busy forums. Overall auto features are too crude to deal with rising noise IMHO.

One very obvious downside of "social justice" which these days is IMHO another term or mask for mob rule, users quickly learn the weakness of the system, and actively suppress other users in a targeted fashion, so what might seem to solve the moderation burden, could end up being weaponised against ordinary users and cause serious community problems, the kind you may not recover from, as recriminations and all kinds of things could explode form a few bad turns.

The most important thing for a user first off, is to be able to report or flag a post easily, that see as problematic for whatever reason and then for that to appear quickly and very visibly to mods and admins alike.

At least a Troll is very easy to see, users who are abusing a system like this, how visible are they? You need to back up the user accounting side too. This is starting to seem like a headache.

Traditional moderation with a good team is the solution, that is sustained and enabled by a great admin/backend that make moderation of problem users fast and efficient. The better this system is the less moderation users you might need to assist in day to day moderation.

Get that right and you are winning.

Naturally moderation teams have there problem and this is often due to progress of time in my experience, so to add a crude feature like
mob down voting that kills post, does nothing to address team work and good admin policy, vision and direction.

A good report/flag system with SPAM and some other options where a user report may temporarily hide a post, is a good start - SPAM might be hidden automatically, (yes that could be abused) but since it is granular more likely it will be used in good faith most of the time (but I have seen people go absolutely nuts with report features too which is just silly), options for off-topic or disruptive might good (it might be goo to allow an admin set extra report flags and also control the action after the report, doe sit hide the post or not. Things like that, which aids the internal operation more than handing over executive powers to the mob!

Setting a downvote threshold to remove a post is basically giving your users based an achievable target to counter disruptive use or exact revenge! Trolls might also use this feature to counter also and then you have all out war.

Leave all the power in the hands of Admins, Mods and give them good control to track, control and censure problematic posts and users, that is hight visible quickly, fast and able to batch operate in comfort and then users will understand that the odd troll might get through or a bit of spam may appear but since you do such a great job of keeping the house clean, they really appreciate your efforts.

No point in making yourself obsolete now is there?

What about using user acc privileges to block guests & spiders?

To abide by my own call to keep things simple.

I would suggest to base such a feature on report/flag action. rather than the downvote.

Downvotes are visble to users.

Reports/flags are not as a rule - this should be the trigger.

This goes some way to addressing the weakness of user mob behaviour to game the vote system to knock people out.

@crazycells

Hmmm my thoughts are go with what is native and supported that works.

As a general caveat - What happens when the plugin breaks and/or is becomes no longer maintained?

It can happen.

Ok if your moderation people are along a few hours later or no longer that 12 hours. Then using the report/flag function is perfect.

Not everyone who votes might be a good reporter and vice versa, as the two things are cognitively different actions IMHO.

I think someone who uses a report/flag feature, is able (*or we hope, but not always) to separate their personal interaction with posts versus helping keep the neighbour hood clean - maybe the way to see it is like this:

(voting) personal action vs (reporting) operational action.

Reporting/flag is a very clear functional action, because it implies that the report will be seen directly, and mod actions are expected to follow soon after or more swiftly.

Adding in extra purpose or breaking out to the voting system, into a secondary or sub role that it was not designed for, is I think, as outlined previously fraught with other issues.

Using reporting/flagging system, the Admin might benefit from be easier reports generated from reports/flags, and can plot over time... using the voting system to extra a report like this I would imagine is more complex or at least needing a lot filtering and re-stating to be useable.

User with most flags
Flags by day, month week... etc. etc.

In the admin there is already "Most Flagged" in the user, so let's go with what is already baked in and expand it out for best performance and visibility, and possibly allow combination of flags + user states to filtering user lists.

Then also if Admin can tailor flags auto-actions based on criteria, that would be sweet:

Flag action (post): HIDES POST - when user x 3> (w/100> posts) flag post - post is hidden, pending further approval/attention + user is frozen from all activity other than reading, until unfrozen, banned or whatever by mod/admin.

It would be useful say for a mod who has to freeze multiple user to be able to drill down a list of FROZEN users, to then investigate further for whatever reason or group unfreeze or unfreeze some and not the others.

User accounts could do with extra User States might be an idea with default but customisable privileges for admins to tailor, for example as above "Frozen".

IIRC a welcome email would be sent after a positive verify email - so do you really want to stop that?

It could cause problems and confusion for user registering.

I would consider that a positive core registration feedback verification for the end user - assuming I have the sequence correct

You can edit the email templates in admin - might that bridge the issue for you temporarily?

You will find these options here:

.../admin/settings/email

You can for example disable the digest email, but I don't see anything for the other email.

I wonder if it was left blank might that stop it?

@julian & co might confirm. Not exactly the answer you were looking for but I hope it helps somewhat.

Speed is important especially for the page views / impressions if you have a biz model wrapped around your site that keeps the lights on.

Be weary of running adverts on Discourse. It is problematic. Infinite school might destroy your hopes and dreams here. I have seen reported and directly almost 80% drop in report revenue in earlier 2.x version and in that case NodeBB solved the problem. Moving to the wrong platform might totally break your business model and in more ways than one!

Fast page loads and option to disable infinite scroll are not to be scoffed at by any means and are also an indication of the kind of thinking and care behind NodeBB and also the quality of what is under the hood.

Existing user bases rarely ever take kindly to new platforms and from my reading and direct experience and comparing notes, Discourse is not a well received upgrade to existing communities.

Thread very carefully here. You may loose your user base overnight and IIRC the creator of Discourse has as much advised it maybe not being for established communities. Discourse does seem orientated more toward those that have no forum presence but what to establish one.

Bottom line - A forum is nothing with users but it's easy to get distracted with the bells and whistles.

NodeBB is like a interative and adaptive evolution. I actually do not like to compare Discourse to NodeBB, Flarum is the obvious comparator, NodeBB is more out on it's own IMHO and NodeBB is more loyal to the idea and concept of a forum.

No platform is perfect, but NodeBB is great, however a godo guide is you have to find or you should look for the one you can live with, not the most features etc. etc.

I think NodeBB is in that ballpark, remember it's not just you but you and all you users have to live with it - I can not state this singular point enough.

I think NodeBB is more technically accessible from many angles and probably easier to make your own and the attitude of the founders comes through in a positive way, not always the case with other platforms.

So to end on an analogous point and I'm no car/auto buff, but if I was to compare NodeBB to a car brand I think I might say it's more Honda.

What brand of car is Discourse, that's a though one... Maybe one of the German ones, BMW perhaps, when it breaks it's a total PITA to fix and suddenly the bills start to mount.

Summary of primary points:

• Caution #1: Moving to the wrong platform might totally break your business model and in more ways than one!

• Caution #2: Moving to the wrong platform might totally break your user base and leave your site overnight.

• Ultimately you need to find a platform you can live with, this means
  -- your users can live with
  -- you can technically support it without major headache
  -- you can afford to host it
  -- you can easily scale it and afford the scale
  -- you have some wiggle room to easily customise out of the box
  -- you can even develop further customisations that are easily supported

It is possible (others may chime in here) but it may be approx 50% cheaper to self host a NodeBB Vs a Discourse in terms of the comparative performance enjoyed.

I agree and I was going to make similar recommendation myself

It would need some testing, as it could have a fat finger fail if the button is too large.

Perhaps it should be to the far right of the bottom bar. Something to consider alright.

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

@omega and how do you explain this?

I have been looking at that market dynamic for a while actually, and while I am not discounting your point, there are many reasons why 1/2 are in the top ascendant spot and also they are not necessarily or easily explained by a view that well it's because NodeBB is not as good as these.

You can not discount the existence for a long time of a Digitalocean one-click, very low ethical jump to get a discourse up and running, so the numbers, might be a bit bubbly, how they translate into deep communities, versus a lighter support like presence and interaction, is another story completely.

I am not really to up on docker but I really do not like that extra layer. IT feels like you can barely touch your installation. If you are stuck on a older version, you are also going ot hit real problems with upgrades. So if you are not too technical, you may get hamstrung here very badly.

Upgrading NodeBB is a very lite experience smoother experience IMHO.

The creator of Discourse has a much higher profile due to I guess Stackoverflow, and I'd say a lot of money and marketing has gone in there too or has been available along the way, also I think was at least a year or more ahead in terms of creation and development - not sure if importing existing forums is any easier on discourse or any other new forum platform, but that might be a factor to.

You could ask the same question about xenoforo and it is nothing like Discourse, it is more like NodeBB but really closer to phpBB/VBulletin type platforms, it is very popular but from using a few forums on this I am not too impressed, but it seems to know it's market really well and what it wants and that means a lot in this space.

Nodebb is similar to a classic forum, and the discourse is similar to a support site.

I think that is a very fair and efficient composition of both platforms.

There are problems with the nesting of categories in the discourse. The developers decided...

For me this is the actual issue with Discourse "the developers decided...", there is a bit of that's they way we like it / do it round these parts arrogance baked into the goods - infinite scroll is emblematic of that type decision that is so divisive, you have to realise that thinking is carried forward through all future development - from what I know, it looks like they will never cater to the other side on that issue and I do not know why if it is ego, or they put everything on black and it is technically to difficult to now add a no-infinite scroll option and the subject remains in the "lets not talk about the war" category.

You'll find a few more "decision" easter eggs, that will have you scratching your head. It's not a terrible platform, it's a very good platform, but sometimes, tastes and styles are not always compatible, find what you can live with.

Discourse does seem to have built up a lot of steam in recent years but I still view it as a better fit for a new community, but community is the wrong word, it's missing a lot of the little touches that engender community.

Plus you get to have interesting threads like this here on NodeBB community, I never noticed such stuff on Discourse meta forum, maybe because I'm always trying to fix something technical.

A strong argument is building to fully embrace the bottom nav menu on mobile and totally ditch the top menu floating bar.