Answers

The hardest part of building a community is getting your users. If you don't have users, you don't have content, and if you don't have content, users won't join your forum. This chicken-and-egg game leads to many communities closing down due to lack of usage. Federation allows you to bypass this step by allowing you to "adopt" the fediverse as a source of content, so you don't have to worry about retaining users, but just creating content. NodeBB ships with a couple of powerful features that allow you to jump-start any new forum with live conversation and discussion with only a few clicks. This guide introduces you to these tools and teaches you how to use them. This article is part of the NodeBB Answers category, where you can learn more about setting up, maintaining, and using your NodeBB forum. Relays & Hashtags Relays are one of the easiest way to get content to stream into your instance. Not only do they provide content to you, setting up a relay subscription also allows you to send a copy of any local content for syndication to other relay subscribers. N.B. We recommend setting up a subscription to the FediBuzz Relay, see below. A good directory of relays can be found at the aptly-named Relay List. Note that different relays have different strengths depending on the type of content you'd like to receive. Some are specific to certain languages, others specific to topic. You can administer your relays by navigating to ACP > Federation > Relays. Each relay has a specific address that you should subscribe to. When looking into a relay, you'll want to add the "Pleroma"-style relay address — it usually ends with /actor. [image: 1772481161928-cba6aa2a-4690-411c-940e-d28beafc0067-image.jpeg] FediBuzz A specific type of relay called the #FediBuzz Relay allows you to set up a relay specific to a instance or a hashtag. This allows you to drill down to specific interest groups and drastically increase the signal-to-noise ratio of incoming content. For example, if you are starting a forum about guitars, it would make a lot of sense for you to receive any and all topics that are tagged #guitar. In that case, a selection of FediBuzz relays to use could be: https://relay.fedi.buzz/tag/guitar https://relay.fedi.buzz/tag/acousticguitar https://relay.fedi.buzz/tag/electricguitar https://relay.fedi.buzz/tag/music You can add these relays using the same interface as above. Note that different hashtags have different levels of noise depending on how focused your forum intends to be. For example, the music hashtag could contain a lot of topics about all types of music, not being limited to guitar music. In that case, that conversation might be related, but not a good fit for a guitar-focused forum. Auto-categorization Rules Getting content into your instance is only one step in kickstarting your community. By default, all remote content that is received is visible in the /world page. Getting this content imported into your forum is the other half of the equation, allowing you to bring this discussion into the local categories themselves. While you could manually find the topics and move them into your local categories, it is a lot easier (and faster!) to automate this by setting up an "auto-categorization rule" in the admin panel. You can find this page in ACP > Federation > Categorization. [image: 1772481823506-e096fbe6-af3a-4196-a900-2f4a58390265-image.jpeg] In this dialog you can instruct NodeBB to automatically categorize content into a specific category based on author or hashtag. Try it today! By combining relays, hashtags, and auto-categorization rules, it is possible to jump-start discussion on your forum around a specific topic, even though you may not have the local users to support it. At the end of the day, discussion can live on your forum or it can live on other instances, on the fediverse. Federation merely allows you to join that discussion and contribute your own.

Federating content to other platforms comes with its own share of surprises. Sometimes your content is faithfully shared and rendered the way you mean it to be, and sometimes it is remixed and changed in ways you didn't expect. It's up to the receiving end as to how to best represent your content, but NodeBB will always try its best to send a version of your content out that looks like what is posted on the forum itself. This article is part of the NodeBB Answers category, where you can learn more about setting up, maintaining, and using your NodeBB forum. Threaded vs. Linear style NodeBB displays its content in a linear style. That is, everything is shown in a straight line, even though some posts may be in direct response to another post further up the line. This presentation style has been common among forums since the very beginning, but other software may display comments differently. There are advantages and disadvantages to each style of presentation. For example... Lemmy and Piefed are two other forum-like softwares that display in a threaded style similar to Reddit. You might like that style better than NodeBB! That's okay, we don't judge Mastodon is a microblog ("X/Twitter"-like), which tends to display only one "branch" of a comment tree at a time. Short form vs. Long form NodeBB can communicate with many different softwares with different content length preferences. "Microblog"-style sites tend to favour smaller, shorter pieces of content, while blogs skew towards longer-form content. NodeBB is able to display both, but excels at displaying medium-to-long-form content. However, some microblogs don't tend to display long-form content very well. In order to improve the presentation of content from NodeBB to those sites, NodeBB will send a automatically-generated "summary" that is an excerpt of your content, for optional display. We calculate this by taking the first 500 characters of your post, and breaking them down into sentences. We then try to include as many sentences as we can without exceeding 500 characters, and compile them as your excerpt. I think 500 characters is too short/long. The site administrator can update this value to be higher or lower. This can be configure in ACP > Federation > Content. I don't like where you chose to end my excerpt! No problem, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution! We also support the use of a magic keyword that you can use to tell NodeBB where to end your excerpt. Simply put the characters [...] where you want the excerpt to end. Using this method, you can also exceed the configurable limit, which is intentional. This is a power-user feature.

It is possible for NodeBBs to talk with each other. In fact, not only can two NodeBB forums see and share conversations, you can also connect with other websites that can federate. This article is part of the NodeBB Answers category, where you can learn more about setting up, maintaining, and using your NodeBB forum. How does it work? Under the hood, NodeBB uses a protocol called ActivityPub to exchange messages and activities between different websites and apps. Each user, category, topic, and post is able to be retrieved via this protocol, and users can follow each other in order to start seeing updates from another website. How do I find other users and categories? You can search for them in the search bar and search pages. Users and categories are identified by their username or handle, which looks something like @[email protected]. For example, I (@julian) can be found by searching for @[email protected], and this category (@answers) can be found by searching for @[email protected]. From there, you can follow users (or watch/track categories) to start the flow of new content to you. It's like subscribing to a newsletter. You'll start getting the new stuff, but you won't be able to see the old stuff unless you already know about it. Okay, I started following some people, where do I see their posts? Content from outside of the forum is all found inside the "World" page, accessible via /world. As new content comes in, it'll be shown in the feed-style timeline. Any remote categories you've started following will also show up in the sidebar for easy access. How do I post to remote categories? Once you've found some categories from outside of the forum (aka "remote categories"), you can browse back to them from the /world page. If you've watched/tracked the category, you can access them from the sidebar. Otherwise you'll have to search for them from the remote category search bar within this page. Once you're in a remote category, you can start a new topic via the "New Topic" button just like a regular category on your forum, and your topic will be sent to the remote category for syndication. Remember to follow the rules of other communities, as they may not match rules on your forum.

One of the first important things to do after setting up NodeBB is to set up an emailer plugin. While NodeBB does include a local emailer, if your forum is particularly active we recommend using an third-party emailer such as SendGrid which provides better deliverability for sites that send a high volume of email. Setting up SendGrid in NodeBB is very easy. Open the administrative dashboard using the 'gear' icon on your forum. Open the Extend > Plugins menu, and select the Find Plugins tab. Use the search on the right. Type 'SendGrid' and the plugin should appear -- select Install when you see it. From Installed tab on the Plugins menu, search again for 'SendGrid' and select Activate. Activating the plugin will require a restart of your forum. To restart, select the Dashboard menu and press the Restart button to the right. After NodeBB restarts, the SendGrid plugin will be active. After you restart, there should be a item called Emailer (SendGrid) under the Plugins menu -- if you don't see this right away, try refreshing your browser. Sign up to SendGrid Go to the SendGrid website, open the pricing page and scroll to the bottom. Click on the link and create your free account. Once you've confirmed your SendGrid account via email, you should be able to login to the SendGrid website. On the left side of your SendGrid dashboard, open Settings and click on API Keys. Click the button in the top right to create a new key. Make sure that the key has Full Access for Send Mail and Alerts.  When you are done, the new key to your clipboard. Now, return to the SendGrid menu on your NodeBB admin panel. Paste the API key into the field, and save your changes. Now go back to the Dashboard to restart your forum one more time. SendGrid should now be working for your forum. [image: youtubelogo.png] Setting up SendGrid mailer for NodeBB

NodeBB does allow uploaded images to be displayed, but it is not optimized for large images or a high volume of images. If your forum lends itself to a lot of image sharing by members, you will want to activate an image handling plugin. One popular example uses the image sharing site Imgur. Open the administrative dashboard using the 'gear' icon on your forum. Open the Extend > Plugins menu, and select the Find Plugins tab. The quickest way to find the plugin is to use the search on the right. Type 'Imgur' and the plugin should appear -- select Install when you see it. From the Installed tab on the Plugins menu, search for 'Imgur' again, and select Activate. Activating the plugin will require a restart of your forum. To restart, select the Dashboard menu and press the Restart button to the right. After NodeBB restarts, the Imgur plugin will be active. Register with Imgur Now you'll need to register your forum with Imgur. If you don't already have an Imgur account of your own you'll need to create one first. Once this is done, go to the Plugin > Imgur menu in NodeBB. Here you will find set-up instructions. Select and copy the callback URL example. Then click on the link that leads to the Imgur application registration page. Enter a name for your forum, and then paste in the callback URL example. Now, select the portion of this that reads "yourforum.com" and replace it with the actual address for your forum. Fill out the remaining fields and submit the form. Imgur makes use of two different keys: a Client ID key and a secret ID. Copy and paste each of these keys into the appropriate field in NodeBB. Hit the "Save" button at the bottom of the screen, then "Authorize." You will be re-directed back to Imgur where you will be asked to allow the forum to access your account. Select "allow." You will then be redirected back to your forum. Once these steps are completed, any images uploaded to your forum will automatically be stored in your Imgur account. [image: youtubelogo.png] Setting up Imgur image upload service for NodeBB

Enabling Google SSO requires that you have a Google account of your own. You will also need to restart your forum a couple of times to activate Google SSO for your users. Install and activate plugin Open the administrative dashboard. Plugins > Install Plugins menu. Select the Find Plugins tab, and search for Google. There are number of different Google-related plugins, so scroll down the list until you see the SSO plugin -- select Install when you see it. From Installed tab on the Plugins menu, search again and select Activate. Activating the plugin will require a restart of your forum. Select the Dashboard menu and press the Restart button to the right. After NodeBB restarts, the Google SSO plugin will be active. Refresh your browser to reveal the Social Authentication menu -- select this menu, and then select Google. Enable Google SSO Authenticate your forum in the Google API console, which is linked from this page. Before opening the Google console, select and copy the text /auth/google/callback without the single quotes. You'll need this info later to link Google SSO with your forum. Follow the Google SSO link. Accept the terms of use. Look for the Google+ API link, which you should find under the Social APIs menu. Click on this link, and then click Enable to the right of the title. Click on "Go to Credentials." For where the API is being called from select "Web Server" and for the type of data select "User Data." Now click "What credentials do I need?" Under "Authorized Javascript Origins" enter your forum address. Under "Authorized redirect URIs", enter the address again but this time paste the path you copied earlier to the end. Click "Create Client ID." Confirmation email address You'll be asked to provide a confirmation email address and a product name. This information will be shown to users who register for your forum, so make sure the name given is descriptive of your site. On the last set up page, just click Done. Your Client ID will now be set up. You'll need both Client ID number and Secret code to activate SSO. To get these, click on the name of your ID. The easiest thing to do is to copy and paste both these codes into a blank notepad window. Once you have done this, you can exit the Google API page. Returning to NodeBB, copy and paste the Client ID and Secret code into the appropriate places on the Google menu page. You can also allow users who sign on with Google to skip the standard email verification step since Google usually does a good job of verifying these emails, but this is up to you. Be sure to save these settings. Once you are done, you will need to restart the forum one more time. Once your forum restarts, new users will be able to join your forum using their Google ID. This option will be added to the user registration page automatically. [image: youtubelogo.png] Enabling Google SSO for your NodeBB forum

Enabling Facebook SSO requires that you have a Facebook account of your own. You will also need to restart your NodeBB instance a couple of times during the process. This will shut down your forum to users for a short period each time, so if you run a busy forum you may wish to do this during off-peak hours. Install and activate plugin Open the administrative dashboard using the 'gear' icon on your forum. Open the Extend > Plugins menu. Select the Find Plugins tab. Use the plugin search on the right side to search for Facebook. From Installed tab on the Plugins menu, search again for Facebook and select Activate. Activating the plugin will require a restart of your forum. To restart, select the Dashboard menu and press the Restart button to the right. After NodeBB restarts, the Facebook SSO plugin will be active. Refresh your browser to reveal the Social Authentication menu -- select this menu, and then select Facebook. Enable Facebook sign-on Go to the Facebook Developers page, which is linked from this menu. Create a Facebook app shell. Select Create a new app, and enter the required information. Select Dashboard on the left of the page and locate your App ID and Secret code. Returning to NodeBB, copy and paste the Application ID and Secret code into the appropriate places on the Facebook menu page. You can also allow users who sign on with Facebook to skip the standard email verification step since Facebook usually does a good job of verifying these emails, but this is up to you. Be sure to save these settings. Once you are done, you will need to restart the forum one more time. Once your forum restarts, new users will be able to join your forum using their Facebook ID. This option will be added to the user registration page automatically. [image: youtubelogo.png] Facebook SSO for NodeBB

NodeBB currently has integrations for: Slack Wordpress Google Adsense Mailchimp Pushbullet Ghost Twilio Amazon S3 Other integrations can be built, if you are interested please contact us for more information.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. SSL is an industry standard and is used by millions of websites in the protection of their online transactions with their customers. By default, all NodeBB hosted forums come with SSL enabled. This means that if you are using the NAME.nodebb.org domain that we provide, all your traffic will automatically be encrypted for better security. If you wish to use your own domain name, please follow the steps outlined in this article. Once complete, contact us at [email protected] to setup your free SSL certificate to ensure that your traffic remains secure. SSL certificates are provided by Let's Encrypt, please visit them at https://letsencrypt.org

Spam is a problem for many forums. To combat it, NodeBB uses a number of different services in a single anti-spam plugin known as Spam-be-Gone. Open the administrative dashboard using the 'gear' icon on your forum. Open the Extend > Plugins menu, and select the Find Plugins tab. Use the search on the right. Type 'Spam' and the plugin should appear -- select Install when you see it. From Installed tab on the Plugins menu, search again for 'Spam' and select Activate. Activating the plugin will require a restart of your forum. To restart, select the Dashboard menu and press the Restart button to the right. After NodeBB restarts, the Spam-Be-Gone plugin will be active. Configure the plugin, go to the Plugins menu and select Spam-Be-Gone. Spam-Be-Gone makes use of three separate services to limit spam. Each of these requires a one-time set-up to activate. Akismet Akismet is a spam filtering service that is run by the blogging platform WordPress. If you are running a non-commercial website you can use it on a pay-what-you-can basis. Follow the link from the NodeBB dashboard to the Akismet site.  If you do not already have a WordPress account you may be prompted to create one. Once you have set this up, you can activate your Akismet account. You will be provided with an API key – copy it, and return to the NodeBB dashboard. Enable the Akismet service, and paste the API key into the appropriate field. If you are new to using Akismet, leave the other fields at their default values as these will work for most sites. Project Honeypot Project Honeypot is a second service used by NodeBB to help identify individuals and bots who are known to be responsible for high volumes of spam postings. You can create a free Project Honeypot account by following the link from the dashboard and providing your information. Once confirmed, you can get an API key by logging into the Project Honeypot dashboard, and clicking the "get one" text link on the left side of the screen. Copy the key, then return to NodeBB, activate the service, and paste the key. reCAPTCHA The Google reCAPTCHA service can be used to provide an additional layer of spam prevention by setting up a challenge that filters humans from bots. Activating this service requires a Google account.  If you wish to use this service, follow the link from the NodeBB dashboard, and enter the URL information for your forum. reCAPTCHA makes use of two different keys: a public API key and a private, or secret, key. Copy and paste each of these keys into the appropriate field in NodeBB. When you are done entering information for all the services, be sure to hit Save at the bottom of the Spam-be-Gone page. You will need to restart the forum one more time for these changes to take effect. [image: youtubelogo.png] Setting up spam protection for NodeBB

While NodeBB does provide anti-spamming features, spam posts will occationally slip by. Logged-in admins can edit or delete offending messages right away by clicking the 'gear' icon on any message. You can also create moderator accounts that are separate from the main admin group. In addition, we have user moderation tools which allow admins to to select multiple users to delete/ban them or to remove their topics/posts. We also have IP Blacklisting which will ban all users originating from a range of IP addresses.

NodeBB has a bug bounty program to supplement our efforts to identify vulnerabilities in our software, and to reward those who submit them to us for fixing. Please visit our bug bounty page for more information.

We offer 20GB worth of data with our hosting plans. If you need additional storage, please contact us to discuss.

If you are using our hosted service or enterprise services, you will retain ownership over member data, such as post content and profile information. Data exports are handled by the NodeBB team. User account information can be made available in CSV format, and all other data provided as a MongoDB database dump. Requests for exports are typically handled within one business day. Contact [email protected] to request a data dump, and please be sure to provide the account name or URL of your forum.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union law intended to promote the protection of privacy and personal information. It’s main goal to give users more control over their personal data. NodeBB was the world's first GDPR compliant forum software. Please visit the NodeBB GDPR page to review our Data Protection Addendum (DPA) and our list of subprocessors.

PLEASE NOTE: this screenshot may not match your NodeBB installation [image: 2dssvmjketz1w86gnlboj4wqbhc70joidepl1u1q25yhs2ackb?1498847968] 1) Settings > Uploads Click on SETTINGS on the top navigation menu and then click on UPLOADS 2) Post Settings This section includes these toggles: Regular file uploads If enabled, allows users to upload regular files Uploaded files privacy If enabled, users will have the ability to make their uploaded files private. (Default: disabled) 3) Post Sizing This section includes these options: Resizing Images Images can be resized to any specified width in pixels. Setting the width to 0 will disable the automatic image resizing feature. Setting a Maximum File Size Specifing a maximum file size will prevent posts from being cluttered with large files. Topic Thumbnails Permission can be granted to allow users to upload thumbnail photos for their posts. A maximum thumbnail size in pixels can be specified to ensure that uploads aren't too large. Allowed File Extensions Specify certain file types to ensure that unwanted types cannot be uploaded by users. eg. (png, jpg, doc). Seperate file types using commas. Leave the list empty to grant permission to all file types without exceptions.[image: 7vvukdosvzvhux5crj1mr8362jrnqo37xs04wrqbju5d36r434?1499274408] 4) Profile Avatars This section includes these toggles: Permission to upload profile images Turning this toggle on will allow users to upload their own custom profile images. PNG conversion Turning this option on will automatically convert uploaded profile image files into PNG format. Custom Default Avatars A custom default avatar can be uploaded. This will become the default image instead of user icons. Profile Image Dimension A maximum width in pixels can be specified for profile images. The default is 128 pixels. Maximum Profile Image File Size Specify a maximum file size in kilobytes (KiB) to prevent larger files from being uploaded as profile images. The default is 256 KiB. Maximum Cover Image File Size Specify a maximum file size in kilobytes (KiB) to prevent larger files form being uploaded as cover images. The default is 2048 KiB. Old Files Turning this option on will allow old versions of avatars and profile covers to be saved to the server. 5) Profile Cover Images Default Cover Images This section will allow for one or more default cover images to be uploaded. They will become the default images used for accounts that haven't uploaded their own custom image. Multiple images can be uploaded by seperating the files with a comma. 6) Save Click the save icon to ensure that all of your changes remain once you leave this page.

PLEASE NOTE: this screenshot may not match your current NodeBB installation [image: 1685559423383-763d7baa09af42c200f73d1bd83041d7783b5316.png] 1) Settings > Tags Click SETTINGS on the top navigation to reveal the drop-down menu, then click Tags. 2) Tag Settings Includes: Minimum Tags per Topic Maximum Tags per Topic Minimum Tag Length Maximum Tag Length 3) Privacy Provides a toggle to make the tags list private. 4) Related topics Sets the maximum related topics to display where the forum theme supports this feature. 5) Save changes The ‘disk’ button at the bottom of the page saves any changes. Changes that are not saved will be discarded after leaving this page.

PLEASE NOTE: this screenshot may not match your current NodeBB installation [image: 8ohlg8ezny7wycedmjomphv368rtncjfkriyoaqef4e1ve5poe?1498232311] 1) Settings > Pagination Click SETTINGS on the top navigation to reveal the drop-down menu, then click Pagination. 2) Pagination Settings When checked, topics and posts are paginated instead of using infinite scrolling. 3) Topic Pagination Sets a maximum number of posts per page. 4) Category Pagination Sets a maximum number of topics per page, and the initial number of topics to load on Unread, Recent, and Popular. 5) Save changes The ‘disk’ button at the bottom of the page saves any changes. Changes that are not saved will be discarded after leaving this page.

[image: 1u40ctgkku51z8uyz5t0bkt9ody4add872oia1d7bk6oye1wln?1498232019] 1) Settings > Groups Click SETTINGS on the top navigation to reveal the drop-down menu, then click Posts. 2) Post Sorting Includes: Default Post Sorting Default Topic Sorting [image: 7538b3u669ft3aki1o1yw3rucai51swvi5y6sflqf3q7as4msy?1498232069] 3) Post Restrictions Includes: Seconds between Posts Seconds between Posts for New Users Reputation threshold before this restriction is lifted(In other words, when a user is no longer considered “new” for the purpose of posting) Seconds be new users can post Number of seconds users are allowed to edit posts after posting Minimum Title Length Maximum Title Length Minimum Post Length Maximum Post Length Days until Topic is consider stale [image: 6heansgt2v78aukiw0otci1p3vkipk3boxqn1mxpbbnsn6nkp4?1498232122] 4) Teaser Settings Teaser Post The teaser is shown at the right hand side for forums using the Persona theme. 5) Unread Settings Unread cutoff days Posts older than this will not appear in user’s unread list. Minimum posts in topic before tracking last read 6) Signature Settings Disable signatures (toggle) Disable links in signatures (toggle) Disable images in signatures (toggle) Maximum Signature Length 7) Composer Settings Show “Help” tab (toggle) Allow plugins to add content to the help tab (toggle) Custom Help Text This is the text for the Help button shown at the top right corner of the compose message area. 8 ) IP Tracking Track IP Address for each post (toggle) 9) Save changes The ‘disk’ button at the bottom of the page saves any changes. Changes that are not saved will be discarded after leaving this page.

PLEASE NOTE: this screenshot may not match your current NodeBB installation [image: 9e5hshvux3nctc7u7h61f2p9kggdn81rw6nkheppwqqcm77rut?1498229921] 1) Manage > Tags Click MANAGE on the top navigation to reveal the drop-down menu, then click Tags. 2) Tag Management The Tag Management content area displays all tags. 3) Modify & Delete Tags The text and background colors of tags can be changed, or tags can be deleted. A click selects a single tag, multiple tags can be selected using SHIFT-click. 4) Search For Tags Typing characters into the search box dynamically displays corresponding results into the Tag Management 5) Tag Settings Settings for tags can be reached via this link or from the Settings > Tags menu.