NodeBB Development Blog

Welcome to the March update digest for NodeBB! This month, the NodeBB team has been hard at work on a number of exciting updates and announcements, including the release candidate...

In the midst of our work hacking on v3 (and I mean that in the best possible light), we ran across an interesting problem with an even more interesting solution....

In advance of the release of v2, we are releasing this migration guide in order to give third-party developers a chance to bring their plugins and themes up-to-date. In the...

This blog post is the second in a series of posts related to the release of NodeBB v3 Please see our other articles related to v3: Meet the Designer (Vlad...

What is this? Version 2 of NodeBB using the Persona theme (and many child themes based off of Persona) used Bootstrap 3 as its front-end CSS framework. As part of...

This blog post is the first in a series of posts related to the release of NodeBB v3 Please see our other articles related to v3: Meet the Designer (Vlad...

As we hurtle our way through 2022, it’s always good to look introspectively and see how far we’ve gone, and how our goals have changed1. Earlier in the year, I...

What is a release branch? Whenever we make a NodeBB release, whether it be a patch release, minor release, or a major release, we also push the code to specific...

Over the years, NodeBB has amassed quite a collection of plugins, most of which were published to npm and listed in the “Manage Plugins” page in the admin control panel....

It’s a big week at NodeBB. For one, we are moving from the office on King Street in Toronto where we have been for the last 5 years… okay yes,...

In advance of the release of v2, we are releasing this migration guide in order to give third-party developers a chance to bring their plugins and themes up-to-date. In the...

The last time we provided an update on our roadmap was in late February of 2020. Development has ebbed and flowed, but we've always tried to make time for contributing...

Introduction This article was inspired by the May 2020 blog post Why we at $FAMOUS_COMPANY Switched to $HYPED_TECHNOLOGY, but while that article is satire, this one is completely serious. This...

Starting in NodeBB v1.19.2, released today, you may notice there is a new account page available for each user — controversial posts. 👎 A counterpart to the “best posts” page,...

Interested in installing NodeBB? The good news is that NodeBB is free and open-source forum software, so anybody can install and set it up, even you! This tutorial will help...

This is a bit of a silly one… but in advance of NodeBB v1.19.2, I wanted to take a minute and announce that we’ll be supporting animated GIFs in post...

Truth be told our latest release was published late last week in advance of “snowmageddon” burying much of the U.S. northeast and Canadian southeast. But everyone is well and we’ve...

Ever since the very first commits to the NodeBB codebase, we’ve made it a point of pride to implement features and functionality that “no other forum has”. We wanted to...

Happy Holidays from the team at NodeBB! Upcoming changes in NodeBB are listed within, as well as some news regarding staff departures.

All of us at NodeBB are committed to delivering fully-secure, bug-free software. At the same time, we believe in full transparency when it comes to disclosing security vulnerabilities Today's blog...

It’s been a weird and wacky summer but we hope you are hanging in there — my daughter sure was at this cool ropes course recently! Meanwhile the team has...

We were recently engaged by the SEO services company Moz to re-vamp their Q&A forum. As is typical of many of our client engagements, not only do we do our...

Spring has sprung in Toronto, so we’re taking advantage by getting some extremely low budget advertising. Hey, doesn’t everyone make their software purchasing decisions based on what they read on...

It’s not news to say 2020 has been… challenging. In Toronto, the home of NodeBB HQ, we’ve gone from a spring lockdown to a cautious summer reopening, to lockdown again...

A couple months back as part of our Roadmap to v2, I made the claim that one of the large features in that release would be the merging of the...

Optimizing Benchpress Recently, I saw the release of nom v6 and decided I wanted to try it out, and see if I could speed up my hobby JS template compiler,...

Unfortunately, after only returning a couple of times to our Toronto office, the city started to see a new spike in COVID-19 cases, so we’re back to working remotely. But...

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we view eLearning. With students preparing to go back to school, parents, teachers, and students alike are wondering how this year will...

A bug in our validation logic made it possible to change the password of any user on a running NodeBB forum by sending a specially crafted socket.io call to the...

Recently, a milestone had passed me by without my knowing – the original start date for my very first programming job was May 3rd, 2010. Ten years have flown by...

This past month, my family asked me to design a website to showcase my late grandfather’s paintings. Grandpa passed away in ’93, the same year that I was born. We...

It’s been several months since our Toronto team has convened in our downtown office, and we’ve blogged previously about how we are spending our free time during social distancing. But...

I had the opportunity to speak on the topic of forum software and its role in the modern web, with my good friend Cinthia Pacheco of Digital Bloom IQ. Cinthia...

Last week we announced the new additions to our team so we wanted to formally introduce ourselves as well. We know this was long overdue, but it’s now time to...

In these extraordinary times, our Toronto-based office is still closed, and everybody is working from home. We’ve no choice but to pursue remote-first positions, though this is not necessarily a...

Developer empowerment has always been at the core of NodeBB: Plugins receive first-class treatment, in that there are plenty of hooks enabling plugins to interact with nearly all facets of...

It seems almost every day that a new library is created, a new javascript framework, or bundle of utility methods that promises to make developing software faster, easier, more enjoyable,...

Happy Good Friday! The NodeBB offices are closed today, but I thought it’d be nice to show us that we all have lives outside of our work, even though we...

There’s a rather disturbing trend that I’ve noticed in recent years – sites take forever to load. It’s a little distressing if only because our internet connections are getting faster,...

What is the Digital Sabbath? The premise is simple: To go without digital media for a whole day as a form of rest. The challenge then, is to go without...

Without hesitation, I’d say that NodeBB has evolved heavily over the past 7 years1. The initial drive those first years was feature parity – bring features to NodeBB that other...

Interested in installing NodeBB? There has always been a latent demand for free forum software – oftentimes, monetary investment in a solution does not make sense for communities just starting...

Wait! Don’t get too excited! There’s a lot to figure out and a lot to actually do, so we’re not in any position to state any timelines or make any...

Apparently the last time there was this much snow in Toronto was 1951, back when “bulletin boards” were just things you stuck push-pins into. Times sure change! But one thing...

Occasionally, a potential client will come to us and ask why they need a forum. Besides the usual reasons, one point that often comes up is the concept of “content...

While the snow keeps falling in Toronto, NodeBB’s team and community contributors have been hard at work on our latest release. Email Improvements We’ve made some changes to help make...

As the last leaves fall from the trees in Toronto, NodeBB 1.11.0 has arrived to help brighten those long nights! A common issue for forums is sorting out what traffic...

Summer is here, and so is the latest release of NodeBB, version 1.10.0. One focus of this release are improvements to the privileges system. We’ve made allowing search and banning...

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force tomorrow. It is a European Union law intended to promote the protection of privacy and personal information, with the goal to...

Spring has finally arrived in Toronto, and that means it’s time for a brand new NodeBB release! So what’s new? We initially planned this release for late April, although we...

We’re proud to announce that NodeBB has become the first forum software to become GDPR compliant. What is the GDPR? The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union...

We've issued over 10k wildcard certificates in the first 48 hours of wildcard and ACMEv2 availability. More about wildcards and ACMEv2 can be found here: https://t.co/0SdH98Oabn — Let's Encrypt (@letsencrypt)...

Forums are about community conversation — mostly. Sometimes you need to talk one-on-one or in a small group, which is why NodeBB includes a chat feature. With our latest release...

NodeBB 1.7.2 is here, and it includes Blob Emoji. What can we say except… Did You Know: The plural of emoji is emoji? We didn’t until this morning. See that...

By now, the majority of you reading this have probably heard that the FCC is preparing to roll back Obama-era Net Neutrality protections that have been in place since 2015....

We keep saying improving speed with NodeBB is one of our top priorities. And guess what? With version 1.7.0 we’ve found even more ways to speed things up, specifically: Translator...

Ever since the very first commits, a primary focus of NodeBB has been speed. We set out to provide a feature-rich forum without the typical reduction in speed commonly associated...

The NodeBB team is pleased to release v1.6.1, a bugfix/patch release, for general consumption. v1.6.1 is considered a patch release and there are few changes to note. By-and-large, this is...

We’ve always liked to think that NodeBB is pretty fast in comparison to other forum softwares out there — our code has been reasonably tight, and of course building on...

The recently announced acquisition of Jive Software’s community tools by Lithium Technologies got me thinking about bodies of water. Sounds a bit weird but stay with me… Jive and Lithium...

I was on my way into the office one morning when I saw a link to the results of the 2017 Open Source Survey, released by GitHub. I’m almost certain...

I suppose in the grand scheme of things, the wait between the last NodeBB release (v1.4.6) and this release, v1.5.0, has not actually been long, though it has felt like...

The first commit to NodeBB was nearly four years ago, and in that time, many changes have been made to the core code itself, from feature additions and bug fixes,...

It’s been quite awhile since we’ve released a new version, and for the most part that is because we’ve been working hard to chase down some of the more esoteric...

We’re very happy to announce a great new theme that also helps support a great cause. The Slick theme has been developed by Anil Mandepudi (a.k.a. pichalite) and is now...

It’s been four months since we last posted about NodeBB v1.1.0. Since then we’ve released three new minor versions (we’re too busy coding to blog apparently!). Here’s a summary about...

Hello all, Last week, we released v1.1.0 of NodeBB, containing a number of new features, bug fixes, and some security fixes. As always, it is advised to update your NodeBB...

Years ago, when I first got started in the software development industry, I had very little experience with open source software. I was vaguely aware of the concept, and I...

The NodeBB team is proud to release v1.0.1, a patch update for NodeBB containing many bug fixes and several new features! Semver Changes Upon the release of v1.0.0, NodeBB officially...

The NodeBB Team is proud to announce the release of NodeBB v1.0.0! This milestone has been a long time in coming, and the previous release, v0.9.3, had been out for...

The NodeBB team is pleased to announce the release of NodeBB v0.9.2! As with all patch-level releases, this is purely a bugfixing release, and all features added are completely backwards...

Occasionally, we humorously refer to ourselves as a “customer driven development team”, because a subset of our team’s direction is given to what our customers want. As a small open-source...

Just yesterday, Pushbullet announced Pushbullet Pro, a paid offering to complement the existing free service offered by the company. As a fellow startup, I understand the need to turn a...

About two weeks ago, the creator of Redis, antirez, published a blog entry in response to perceived security "faults" in Redis. From time to time I get security reports about...

Part 2 of a series introducing what’s new in NodeBB v0.9.0. Other parts of the series: Part 1 – https://blog.nodebb.org/goodbye-gravatar-hello-user-icons/ A common complaint with the v0.8.x series (and prior) was...

Today’s article will be a short how-to guide regarding a common problem with horizontally scaled NodeBB installations: In a deployment environment with more than one NodeBB server, locally uploaded files...

Part 1 of a series introducing what’s new in NodeBB v0.9.0. Other parts of the series: Part 2 – https://blog.nodebb.org/emailers/ Last month, with the release of NodeBB v0.9.0 coming up,...

MongoDB 3.1.9 was released last week http://blog.mongodb.org/post/130823293808/mongodb-319-is-released 3.1.9 is a development release so it is not intended for production use but the changes will be rolled into the 3.2.0 release...

It’s been a while since we’ve posted a new blog entry. Yesterday I went about upgrading this blog to the latest version of Ghost and well, everything exploded. The version...

On my daily trawl through the blogosphere, I often find reflections from other startup founders that turn out to be very useful in working with NodeBB. Today I read the...

In October, we ran a month-long contest to encourage developers and designers to give the NodeBB’s extension framework a try. They were given a chance for bragging rights and cool...

This October, we will be running a month-long contest where you can win tons of cool prizes and bragging rights for a year! We have almost $5000 worth of prizes...

It’s been about four months now since the fourth minor version of NodeBB, and as usual the latest release comes with a myriad of cool features, fixes, and performance improvements....

I hate waiting. I especially hate waiting for programs to compile when I want to make a small change, which is one of the reasons why I like web programming...

Note: This blog post is part one of a two-part series. The second part has not been posted yet. I won’t mince words — searching for things is hard. It...

It’s been almost two months since v0.4.3 was released, and we’ve been working hard to make sure that our next release is just as featureful and polished as our releases...

By far, my favourite story when telling people about translations in NodeBB was from fairly early on in the project: One very early adopter of NodeBB was a fan forum...

Today, April 22nd, 2014, marks an entire year since Andrew committed the first lines of code into the NodeBB codebase. We’ve had an incredible year, celebrating mini-milestones like getting our...

It’s been almost two months since v0.3.2 but we hope it’s been worth the wait! The NodeBB team is proud to announce the release of version 0.4.1, chock full of...

This weekend, a very serious OpenSSL vulnerability was published, causing system administrators all over the world to scramble to their consoles in order to update their systems so that they...

It’s hard to make the claim that Facebook is no longer a social network — after all they did invent the term* However, after reading Eat24’s breakup letter to Facebook,...

NodeBB is zippy. It’s an underdog, the David to the Goliaths of the forum community. A large part of why that is is because we don’t implement features that slow...

A persistent pain point in NodeBB usage has always been installing plugins/themes. For example, the steps to install a plugin are as follows: npm install nodebb-plugin-myplugin Navigate to the "Plugins"...

That’s right, NodeBB’s widgets system is finally here. It will be officially released when 0.4.x hits in the next few weeks but if you’re interested in trying it out in...

The NodeBB team is proud to announce that the latest version of our forum software was released on Friday, 14th February (Happy Valentines Day)! This version contains several bug fixes,...

Part of making NodeBB extensible is programming a plugin system, similar to CMS platforms like WordPress and Drupal. The plugins themselves enhance the base feature set of NodeBB and allow...

Pewter is a theme that takes full advantage of NodeBB’s category image upload feature. The theme comes with a few built-in widgets including a Random Topic block, Popular Topics block,...

Thanks to @Mr_Waffle from BitBangers for writing this article! Source: BitBangers The Problem Say you want your plugin to communicate between client and server using websockets. There isn’t a documented...

We’ve released a new plugin that allows administrators to edit the theme’s CSS live on the actual forum page. This ought to make reskinning super easy – no need to...

According to a new site making the rounds (and a repo that’s currently trending!), no, you might not need jQuery. More on that shortly. At NodeBB, we have afairly divergent...

The NodeBB team is proud to announce that the latest version of our forum software was released yesterday! This version contains several bug fixes, improvements, amazing features, new translations, and...

We’ve officially hit 50 plugins, so congrats goes out to our crazy team of developers who have been working so hard on extending NodeBB core with some awesome features. Here’s...