@pichalite Sorry I was not as clear as I could've been. Yes, basically private groups whose discussion can only be visible to members of the group. I am not sure if I want to allow this option. Some members want it while others do not.

I am torn between enabling user groups or not. I like the fact that is gives users another means to interact/communicate and thus spend more time on the forum, but I do not like that group discussion is not on the forum.

Has anyone enabled groups after running their forum for some time without groups, and did you notice a decrease in forum activity?

Voted. Looks like the "last post I read' option is kicking arse!

@pichalite Thanks for the reply. I did not know about Shoutbox, but see it is still in development. I will stick with the default chat setup for now until Shoutbox is ready for production.

Is it possible to breakout the chat feature from its current position in the nav bar and have it in plain view like the sidebar?

Also, would it be a lot of work to be able to option it to be more like a chat room where members could hop in and out as they pleased?

@AOKP THx for your help -- I have a new instance of NodeBB (on Ubuntu 14.04) up and running.

The testing continues.

@soulz2003 I also explored migrating from our current forum (vB5) to Xenforo. While I did really like XF, I moved it to the 'no' pile simply because I don't consider it modern software that would keep users engaged for say the next 5 years. XF is pretty much like all other old-school offerings out there.

The only 'next generation' forum engines I'm aware of are NodeBB, Discourse, and Flarum, but there might be others.

Funny story: I setup a small Slack channel to discuss future forum ideas with a few members. After using Slack for only 2 days NO ONE wanted to go back to a 'traditional' forum (NodeBB included). If Slack was free and included a 'Posts' feature I would not be here at all. I emailed the team at Slack about adding these features and also offering a self-hosted version and was told they were already evaluating some of those options.

Ok I don't think I explained myself very well. If you take a look at the original poster's screenshot you will notice there are 4 Categories without posts. In my experience I noticed that once all Categories had posts then the Categories kind of 'settled' and (most of) the white space was gone.

What happens if you add a description for your 'Questions and responses' Category and then add a post or two in that Category? Then do the same for the 3 Categories at the bottom

I don't have an answer for you, but did notice a similar issue. It seemed to partly correct itself when each category saw some activity and the posts would sort of fill in the white space you're seeing.

@Peter-Zoltan-Keresztes @pichalite Just wanted to say THANK YOU to the both of you for all the help -- it was really appreciated. I have destroyed the DigitalOcean Droplet because spending my evenings and weekends with with my face buried in a terminal is not very appealing.

Unfortunately, It doesn't look good for me + NodeBB. That fact that I can unknowingly and easily nuke the forum simply by playing with settings in the frontend with little to no chance of fixing it has given me a lot to think about.

I need to make a decision on forum software within the next few months, but NodeBB is scaring the shit out of me. It's too bad Flarum is still some months (or a year) away from production.

Now I'm not sure what to do.