@a_5mith said:

The doc is over two years old. so does contain out of date info.

Refer to the documentation, it'll likely be more up to date. Link to Documentation

That's where I found that to begin with. It didn't mention needing a package.json https://docs.nodebb.org/en/latest/plugins/create.html so that needs to be added.

First I tried a poll plugin. It was old and broken. Oh well.

Next, I need to make an SSO login plugin. First I wanted to look at how others do it and hook into and override the login as a starting off point.
First I tried nodebb-plugin-ns-login, as it seemed closest to what I was looking for. And it was last updated 4 months ago, so seems current enough.
I check the login page, and it's the same nodebb login.
So next I try nodebb-plugin-sso-wordpress, one by a nodebb founder. Same thing.

I've made sure they're set as active.
I've rebuilt and reloaded multiple times.
I tried removing the slick theme and using the starting "Persona" theme, thinking that might be the problem.