Hi NodeBB Team,
After three years of research between NodeBB, Discourse and Flarum, ultimately I have decided to go with NodeBB for my first forum. 
I am doing some research on (Ubuntu and MongoDB) customizing NodeBB topic and frontpage according to my needs. I have started with topic part. I am totally new into web development. It will be great help if you can guide me with following questions,
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How can I restrict users from creating New Topic? Only Admins and Moderators should be able to do that.
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I am heavily dependent on HTML for customizing posts, so how to restrict general users from using Markdown HTML. Can we use two different Reply solutions for users and Mods? I mean only Admin and Mods should use HTML in the posts.
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Is there any way to restrict quoting Admins or specific post?
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Is there any way to start on shared hosting. I know till 2016 it was, NO, but anything changed after that?
Your guidance are highly appreciated. Thank you.