From my understanding, Redis keeps the entire forum database in memory?...so if the forum gets large, it sounds like that scales very poorly.

Second the latter part of attis's question. I've set up a trial nodeBB using what I think is "just mongo" and I've seen "just redis" tutorials as well. How do you do this Redis+Mongo mixed setup, and when does that become worth it over just Mongo for a larger board?

One thing I really dig in IPB is the Status update hook. Example:

Is there anything similar for nodeBB? Perhaps I'm not searching the right terms for plugins.

Relatedly, things that are plugin-dependent (such as status, polls, ... even forum sigs? PMs?... etc) -- how does this translate over in a migration? I notice that the only existing IPB->nodeBB converter works only for an old version of node, which seems like a bit of a hassle, especially as it might require tracking down old versions of everything else (mongo, nodeJS) to install with it.

I'm contemplating the idea of switching over from IPB to node, but at first glance it looks like it'd be a cumbersome process. If anyone has any insights to share, I'd appreciate them! I'm especially concerned about how much would be lost in the crossover.

Thanks, everyone!

There seems to be some kind of mismatch here. I'm watching two categories (General and Development); there's a "1 unread topic" bubble, but when I go to https://community.nodebb.org/unread, I get a "no unread topics" message.

Probably a very small error somewhere, but worthy of correcting.

It's gone away on its own after posting this thread -- but it shouldn't have been in that state to begin with, right?

@julian said:

You can sort of customise this by watching or ignoring a category.

For example, I am ignoring the Testing Ground category here.

Ah!

Would it make more sense to have all categories unwatched by default, as opposed to watched?

I actually saw the "Ignore" icon before, but didn't realize what it did. I thought it was something about ignoring users -- so I ignored it

@Drew-Llewellyn said:

... but that bubble keeps people like you reading all the topics

Haha! Well, not really, though.

That bubble is effectively a subscription to the entire forum -- every topic is being treated as a subscribed topic or email. Especially for a large and diverse forum, that's crazy: you're asking people to either deal with this red alert bubble, or to constantly make sure that every single topic is read, or at least "marked as read".

So, I do still want notifications that are relevant to me -- when somebody quotes me, for example, or when I actively choose to subscribe to a thread of interest. But I don't want two notification centers with the expectation that I need to have the entire forum marked unread.

Most forums I've seen have different forum markers/class names applied to categories with no new/unread posts. I know nodeBB is trying to do things different, but that seems like a very sensible way of handling it.

Perhaps this is just a styling issue, though. Graying it out does wonders and makes the number a bit of background information, rather than a BIG RED ALERT. ex:

You could even slap a display:none on there and disappear the bubble entirely. I'm sure there's enough on the development plate, so perhaps leaving it in the theming realm is appropriate. Though it does seem odd to have to resort to that.

@baris said:

Exporting data from NodeBB is pretty simple, if your data set is small you can just read the posts/topics and write them to a text file.

function export(set, prefix) {
    db.getSortedSetRange(set, 0, -1, function(err, ids) {
          var keys = ids.map(function(id){ return prefix + id; });
          db.getObjects(keys, function(err, data) {
                fs.writeFile('/path/to/' + set + ' .txt', JSON.stringify(data));
          });
   });
}

export('posts:pid', 'post:');
export('topics:tid', 'topic:');

The above code would export all posts and topics in JSON format, you would still need to write an importer for your target platform.

This is a great level of support! I appreciate it and for potential future adapters of nodeBB, it's definitely good to know that you can try without being locked in.

I looked through my personal settings and didn't see an option to disable this. I like to get relevant red notification bubbles, but the vast majority of topics on a forum aren't things I'm going to worry about reading. So, there's no need for that for me, and I'm a little mystified that I can't seem to turn it off! (I'm the sort of person who can't stand to leave these attention-grabbing bubbles alone. They beg to be taken care of. You'd have to be someone who leaves unread messages in your inbox to ignore them, IMHO! :))

Is this built-in to nodeBB, or is it just an administrative decision on this particular board? As a user, I'd like to have the option. As a potential nodeBB adapter, I'd definitely like to be able to customize that.

I searched a little bit on this and maybe I don't have the terminology right, as I didn't find anything. Apologies if I'm being redundant. TIA!

@Mega said:

@askar said:

How many instances can I install on 512Mb RAM digitalocean droplet?

One at least

If you'll use Redis, and your forums will have less than 100k messages each, probably two
If you'll use Mongo, in the same circumstances, maybe even three instances

However, I'd recommend you to use 512MB droplet for each instance

From what little I've read so far, it sounds like MongoDB is just better. Is there any reason why people would use Redis instead? Is it easier? More practical in some way? Thanks!