NodeBB

NodeBB is a robust nodejs driven forum built on a redis database. It is powered by web sockets, and is compatible down to IE8.

Installation

NodeBB is powered by Node.js with a Redis database. They must be installed prior in order for NodeBB to work. build-essential exposes the build environment for bcrypt compilation.

# apt-get install nodejs redis-server npm build-essential

Next, obtain all of the dependencies required by NodeBB:

$ npm install

Now we ensure that the configuration files are properly set up. NodeBB runs on port 4567 by default. The client side config can be set up thusly:

$ cp public/config.default.json public/config.json

... and the server side config can be set up similarly:

$ cp config.default.js config.js

Ensure that /public/config.json points to the publically accessible IP/hostname of your forum, and that the values of the server side config are also set correctly (see below).

Lastly, we run the forum.

$ node app

(Optional) Some server configurations may install the node binary as nodejs instead of node. You can re-map it (so as to not break compatibility with node-supervisor) by running the following command:

# update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/node node /usr/bin/nodejs 10

Server Configuration

The server configuration file (located at /config.js) contains default options required for the running of NodeBB. The following options are available:

Option	Description
base_url	(Default: 'http://localhost') A web-accessible URL to your app, without the port
upload_path	(Default: '/public/uploads') A relative path (relative to the application's web root) to the uploads folder. Please ensure that Node.js can write to this folder
use_port	(Default: true) Whether or not to include the port number when constructing the url for use in NodeBB. If you are serving NodeBB via a proxy (i.e. nginx), switch this off.
port	(Default: 4567) The default port that NodeBB runs on. Even if you are running NodeBB behind a proxy server, this port must be set.
mailer	(Default: {     host: 'localhost',     port: '25',     from: 'mailer@localhost.lan' }) Settings for the outgoing mailer (for emails involving user registration/password resets)

Client Configuration

As the client will utilise web sockets to connect to the server, you'll need to customise the client configuration file (located at /public/config.json) to point to your server's publically accessible IP. The port will be identical to the port specified in the server-side configuration (defaulted to 4567).