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I'm sure this is a very elementary question, but I'm not sure I fully understand the rationale behind locking a topic.
I realize this action will disallow any users from adding more replies to a topic in the future... but what are the underlying benefits of doing this? If someone in the future wants to add a legitimate reply to an older discussion, why prohibit this? Especially with evergreen or evolving issues that warrant ongoing discussion, why lock future responses out of it?
Is it to discourage spammers?
Does locking a topic make it a noindex page and exclude it from Google search results?
Just trying to understand the full consequences of locking a topic, so we can determine if/when we should be doing this.
What's the best way for me to designate certain forum URLs as "noindex" (so Google will ignore them in their search results)? Can this be done from the admin portal, or directly on the site as a global moderator?
I'm trying to noindex all of our forum's category pages and many of our older topics/posts that aren't adding much value to the site anymore, but at the same time, we don't necessarily want to delete them outright.
It seems like this should be an easy thing to do, but I can't figure out if/where/how it can be done.
@julian said in Possible to Prevent Post Number Being Appended to URL While Scrolling Through Threads?:
Note that even if you check the source for the page with the /1, /2, etc., the canonical URL still responds as appropriate (without the post number).
Thanks. I tried this and it does seem to point me back to the original post when I visit one of these canonical URLs… so I guess my next question is, what’s the point of having these /1, /2, /3 URLs at all if they’re just going to bring people back to the original post anyway? Surely I’m missing what the functional purpose is, I’m just not sure what that is.
And just to probe a bit deeper, is difficult to give forum admins a toggle switch to turn this feature off?
I get that it isn’t supposed to cause any issues with Google, but in the cases where we just don’t want these added bells and whistles, wouldn’t it be easy to give admins the option to say “no thanks” to these extra URLs?
We recently discovered that these canonical URLs (ending in /2, /3, /4, etc for each new reply with a topic) are having some negative impacts on the quality of our site because Google is still indexing and showing the /2, /3 and /4 at times when it shouldn't. As more pages get created, more and more of these URLs get created too.
Is there any way to stop these additional "pages" from showing as a user scrolls down the page? Perhaps even set up redirects from /1, /2, and /3 back to the base post (and if there isn't a way, could this functionality be created in the next update)? This would help get rid of the many poor (and basically duplicate) URLs that are being created.
I originally thought it was a cool feature for NodeBB to have, and it's probably great for some forums that don't care about SEO... but given the negative impact it can have on the overall quality of a website (in Google's eyes), it would be very helpful (critical, even) to have the ability to turn this feature off.
Is there a way to see a running list of all forum posts and replies in the order of when they were posted?
We've been able to eliminate most of the obvious bot-generated spam in our forum. However, some spammers are pretty sneaky about how they do it.
They'll join our forum, leave a few replies to existing topics that seem like legitimate replies (the content isn't very useful, basically just noise, but it also doesn't have any of the classic/obvious indicators of spam). Then, after waiting a few days, they'll find existing topics (usually ones that are several months old and haven't seen any action in a long time) and they'll start leaving replies that don't add any value, are plugged full of keywords and include links pointing back to other websites.
These spam replies are harder to identify because the moderators have to carefully read through ALL of the replies beneath a topic in order to pick them out. However, it would be easier if there was a way to see a chronological log of all forum posts dating back in time. This way, the moderators could just quickly read through every single post and reply and spot which ones have spammy links included in them.
Is there a way to see all forum activity listed out like this? If so, how?
We could, for example, update the list of actions to include a "send an email" action, with customizable text.
The ability to send an email reward with customizable text would probably open up some possibilities for other forum admins, but in my case, this would only be useful if the trigger is coming from outside of NodeBB, like you said (if they're already a registered member, then any of the existing actions would presumably be sufficient to get their attention... the idea behind the email is to reach someone who isn't part of the community yet).
It sounds like I'll have to get with my developer for this one... however, the whole purpose behind this automation is so that I can send out email invites to outsiders so they can join a private group (per this other thread), so we'd have to get that squared away first before this automation step makes any sense to work on. I'll email you about this shortly. 
Is there a way for an admin or moderator to invite outsiders (i.e. - people who haven't joined my forum yet) to join my forum AND join a private group through a single email invite?
I see it's possible to invite existing members of my forum to a private group (if I know their username, as an admin, I can invite them through the group page), but I'm not seeing a way to invite outsiders via email only so they can join both the forum and the group.
Is there a way to do this that I'm not seeing?
If not, is this something that could be developed as well?
Is there such a thing as a Zaiper integration that can work with NodeBB? I didn't see any apps available for NodeBB in Zapier, but figured I would check here to see if there's a workaround available.
My goal is to send out an automatic email invite to new users in my community, so they can join a private group within my forum. This could be triggered by a number of things (making a purchase, signing up for an email list, etc). It doesn't seem to be a problem finding the trigger... but I'm not able to find a way to automate anything within my NodeBB forum.
Is there a way to do this (or maybe a creative way to make it work by using other apps that do work within Zapier)?
@baris is there a way to control which posts show up on the group page (like this one, for example)?
For instance, if I've set up a private group in my forum that has view and posting privileges in a hidden category, is there a way to allow only the posts from those group members, that were posted in that hidden category, showing up in the group feed?
By default, my group feed shows the posts from those group members that have been made everywhere in the public forum (I can't find a way to limit this feed to showing only what's posted in that hidden category).
Does that make sense? Is there a way to do what I'm describing?
@PitaJ - if I want my group to be hidden from the rest of the forum, and only group members can view and post in a certain category, how exactly do I set this up?
So far, what I've done is:
...but how do I:
So far, I've checked in Settings > Group and I've checked in Manage > Groups and I'm not seeing any obvious places where I can hide a category or assign a category to a group.
Are there any tutorials on how to do this?
@PitaJ by "exclusive access" - does this mean only these group members can make posts in this category (the rest of the forum can still see the posts, but not create posts)?
Or does this mean only these group members can see the category at all (to those outside the group, the category and all posts within it isn't even visible)?
I'm trying to I understand the fundamental purpose of a "Group" in a NodeBB forum.
From what I can see... it seems to be an aggregation of existing forum users who all share the same label. By visiting the group page (like this one, for instance), it's literally just a feed of all the most recent posts those group members have made throughout the global forum, regardless of which category they've posted in.
Being in a group doesn't give those users access to any hidden, private, privileged conversations that only those group members can see. The average user would never be compelled to pay for group membership, because a group doesn't seem to do that much.
The only functional purposes I can see are:
Those group members might have some kind of elevated "status" within the community since they've been placed in said group (and if we're going to make this argument, it would probably be more effective to give these group members had some kind of optional "badge" over their profile picture to clearly indicate "This person is in ABC Group! Look how cool they are!").
If any forum user wants to see what all of those group members are posting, there's one central place to see the 10 most recent posts from these members (note that the feed stops after 10 posts... so the usefulness of this is quite limited).
Am I missing anything? It seems like there must be something else...
In my mind, and in a perfect world, the real purpose and value of having a group would be in giving those group members some kind of private or privileged platform to talk amongst themselves, having conversations that:
...almost like a private Facebook group, but without all the horrid distractions of Facebook.
Do groups serve some other purpose that I'm missing?
And does this kind of functionality exist within NodeBB groups and I'm just not seeing it?
If not, what would it take to create this kind of functionality?
Does anyone know of a moderation plugin/bot(or even a feature built into NodeBB natively) that can automatically remove new posts based on words or links that are most likely spam?
I know of several subreddits that have this functionality built into them, so it seems like there should be a way to do this within a NodeBB forum.
For instance, if someone tries to post anything with the word "Lucifer" in the forum (either as a new topic or in response to an existing topic), the post will never even be seen by the public because this bot should automatically remove it.
Is there such a thing?
Here's another related question...
When sorting by "Most Votes", is this sorting by the highest number of UP votes, or is this sorting by the highest number of TOTAL votes (both UP and DOWN)?
This is a very important distinction... because we wouldn't necessarily want to show a post with 1,000 down votes to show up as #1 simply because it had the most votes. We would want to show the BEST reply, with the most UP votes.
Does anyone know how NodeBB distinguishes this sorting functionality?
