what is the reason for choosing node BB over flarum?

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  • what is the reason for choosing node BB over flarum?

    is SEO of flarum not so great?

    edit: i am reading this now 🙂

    https://discuss.flarum.org/d/26838-flarum-is-slow-in-comparison-to-nodebb

  • @hari i have read the entire discussion and I understood it’s more related to speed.

    i would like to add one other point flarum has no good SEO support.

    • Solved
  • @hari Like this platform I too have made the switch from Flarum to NodeBB.

    Having tried both platforms out previously there’s a lot more you ‘get out of the box’ with NodeBB in comparison to Flarum.

    For example there’s many things like SEO ready, whereas with Flarum you need to install an extension.

    As well as a host of other things (which I’m sure Mark will delve into) the ability to control users much more easier is something every forum needs, maybe they are getting better but with NodeBB everything I’ve come across seems much more simple to set up, it just works as it’s intended to do so.

  • @hari I’d have to agree with this point. However, it’s difficult to create an SEO package that ticks all the boxes unless it’s an area you have extensive knowledge in. Personally, I never had that much of an issue with SEO in Flarum, but a huge issue with its performance.

  • @phenomlab i feel, for any website SEO is mandatory that’s the reason we did not go away from WordPress.

    when it comes to flarum I am so much stressed, flarum just indexed 800 unwanted sub-pages with the same page title which is a big SEO mistake. so I had to commission this extension to fix the canonical URL issue. i do not bother sponsoring but, it takes a huge learning curve to find the problem and wait for devs to make an extension to solve the issues.

    if we ask the flarum team for SEO support they say it’s not part of the core and it’s the extension job. and no one is ready to fix SEO problems. (I’ve contacted the SEO author too for few SEO fixes but looks like he is experiencing family problems and he will not be available for the next 2-3months for sure.) in this pandemic situation, we can not demand anything from anyone … everyone is facing problems.

    all we can do is go forward with what is ready! (nodeBB)

    when it comes to nodeBB or Wordpress they provide basic SEO support. ❤❤❤

    i understand i can not expect too much from a newborn baby (flarum) but hope they will soon start provide basic SEO support out of the box.

    The flarum default them is something 🔥🔥🔥 ❤❤❤

    now I am fully into flarum and i can not switch. i am so jealous of you guys for switching to node BB 😭

    +++ cloudways do not support nodeBB (what kind of people they are? 😢 )

    hope flarum eventually grows and dominate the forum world.

  • @hari great post and input, thanks. I agree with your frustrations. 4 months ago and prior I asked for a GDPR extension to be created to address the compliance issue. After all this time, still nothing - and, the Flarum Devs insisted it wouldn’t be in the core.

    This is totally wrong in my view. For such an important compliance requirement, it should definitely be in the core ! And yet, blomstra is being targeted towards the European market where GDPR is a huge compliance risk if you cannot satisfy the requirements and hold private data concerning users. That, coupled with extensions that simply don’t work properly, or cause speed issues overall is an absolute non starter in my view.

    Insisting on keeping the core lean simply means you can blame extension developers file slowing down sites.

  • @jac agreed. The out of the box experience with NodeBB is superior than the same with Flarum Core. You can’t really compete the two. NodeBB speed excels that of Flarum by a mile.

  • @hari said in what is the reason for choosing node BB over flarum?:

    flarum just indexed 800 unwanted sub-pages with the same page title which is a big SEO mistake

    😨 Can you clean that up ? I expect it’s possible with Google Search Console, but something of an extremely laborious task.

  • @phenomlab This extension is the fix for that 🙂

    https://github.com/SychO9/flarum-discussion-canonical-url

    I’ve checked how nodeBB canonical URL is … i can see they have done the right job 🙂

    fd10e23e-0662-4f09-96a0-14083bdd4971-image.png

  • @hari said in what is the reason for choosing node BB over flarum?:

    @phenomlab This extension is the fix for that

    Yes, but that’s another extension to fix an extension !!

  • @phenomlab SEO extension does not do deal with canonical URLs for flarum core.

    flarum core sets 10 or 20 posts into a group and they add ?page=1 as the 20th post canonical URL

    31b6dae0-8eb7-4cf1-9893-1a8b9704f26c-image.png

    when I took this to askvortsov. he said if something can be done with an extension it has to be done with an extension and we don’t change the core, i was shocked by reading this.

    clark also responded in the same manner (I’m sure he is not into SEO) google says you should not have multiple pages with same title otherwise bot will get confused to give ranking.

    imagine if someone searches for what is the difference between nodebb and flarum and google shows /24 th post as the first result? user will not understand anything until he scrolls up

    https://discuss.flarum.org/d/28600-understanding-canonical-urls-of-flarum-posts/

    i don’t want to talk about this further, it is not good to discuss the flarum flaws without their presence. hope they will realise the SEO part soon!

    we will continue using flarum for the next 5years

    on the other hand if get budget we will be switching to WordPress (gatsby + wpdiscuz with graphql)

  • @hari does your forum currently have many posts and users?

  • @jac Yes, i would not be able to share my domain since I’ve singed a non disclosure agreement with my organization

    82b0bab8-cc10-4765-b578-6e2e4d91e4bf-image.png

    we do deal with my posts every day, I have a great bonding with flarum 😛

  • @hari said in what is the reason for choosing node BB over flarum?:

    i don’t want to talk about this further, it is not good to discuss the flarum flaws without their presence. hope they will realise the SEO part soon!

    And in the same sense, this site was not created to bash Flarum in any way. It was borne out of a lack of fundamental basics in Flarum that require a shed load of extensions to gain the required experience, where in contrast, NodeBB has all I need out of the box.

  • @hari Wow, very good stats 😁. I was going to suggest moving to NodeBB would be a simplier option if having trouble with flarum although it seems moving isn’t an option with that may users / posts.

  • @phenomlab said in what is the reason for choosing node BB over flarum?:

    @hari said in what is the reason for choosing node BB over flarum?:

    i don’t want to talk about this further, it is not good to discuss the flarum flaws without their presence. hope they will realise the SEO part soon!

    And in the same sense, this site was not created to bash Flarum in any way. It was borne out of a lack of fundamental basics in Flarum that require a shed load of extensions to gain the required experience, where in contrast, NodeBB has all I need out of the box.

    Absolutely, although by the same token forums like this simply work because we’re all here to gather advice and find solutions to our tech issues we face, I’d say opinions are welcome I’m not speaking for the platform I’m generally saying it’s good to have an opinion on something and for us it started with Flarum and quite frankly that’s why we’re here because we’ve used Mark’s services before.

    What I’m trying to say is discussions and opinions are mostly healthy 😆.

  • @jac a year ago we devloped a WordPress flarum like theme to switch to (Wordpress + wpdiscuss)

    everything works perfect but the page size is ending up around 5mb and load time suks. (do not laugh at me 😛 )

    recently we explored gatsby and graphql, wpgraph ql now supports wp comments … if gatsby can generate a static page of WordPress comments in future we will switch to it.

    recently bbpress got graphql support too.

    using gatsby someone may build good static forum. it will be a great experience with Yet another related post plugin and a static page 😍 lets see wp graph ql need to grow

    google loves related posts and too many links in a page.

    and each discussion page should have more content in a way related posts work as content too. quora does this a lot.

    even if qoura has 1000 posts they don’t change URL (like nodeBB or discourse)

    cdd0a2ff-1a87-4775-a670-2d9bfcc33fd6-image.png

  • @hari said in what is the reason for choosing node BB over flarum?:

    a year ago we devloped a WordPress flarum like theme to switch to (Wordpress + wpdiscuss)

    Sounds interesting! I used to mainly run wordpress sites but haven’t done for a few years properly anyway.

    Forgive me if I’m wrong but are you looking for a solution away from Flarum?

  • @jac said in what is the reason for choosing node BB over flarum?:

    Forgive me if I’m wrong but are you looking for a solution away from Flarum?

    we will continue to use flarum for existing forums.

    in future, we will plan something with wp graphql & gatsby

    static site with a commentator that would be good enough for our needs.

    we may close resignations on current flarums and redirect new users to the wp graphql powered forum. old installations will act as archives not sure.

    no thoughts for next 1-2 years

  • @hari said in what is the reason for choosing node BB over flarum?:

    @jac said in what is the reason for choosing node BB over flarum?:

    Forgive me if I’m wrong but are you looking for a solution away from Flarum?

    we will continue to use flarum for existing forums.

    in future, we will plan something with wp graphql & gatsby

    static site with a commentator that would be good enough for our needs.

    we may close resignations on current flarums and redirect new users to the wp graphql powered forum. old installations will act as archives not sure.

    no thoughts for next 1-2 years

    It sounds like you have a clear goal, flarum isz a good option and if it irons out its issues it could be big.

    Personally if your project with WordPress and flarum don’t go fo plan to id definitely say go for Nodebb as a solid choice.


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    Lower grade VPS instances, whilst cheap, do have the inherent issue in the fact that they only have 1Gb of RAM. In most cases, this is enough for relatively small or minor projects, but when you need more RAM that you actually have, you’ll quickly find that instance exhausted, and your applications crashing as a result.

    This is where the swap file comes into play. Adding a swap can significantly improve performance on low budget hosts, but without direct root access, this is not going to be possible. If you own a VPS that has root level access and need to add a swap, follow the below guide.

    First, what exactly is a Swap?

    swap is a section of hard disk space that has been set reserved for the operating system to temporarily store data that it is unable to hold in RAM. This step allows you increase the amount of information that your server can keep in its working memory (but not without with some caveats, which I’ll explain below). The swap space on the hard disk will be used mostly when there is no more sufficient space in RAM to host any in-use application data.

    The information written to disk will be far slower than information kept in RAM (RAM is superior in terms of speed owing to its architecture), but the operating system will prefer to keep running application data in memory and only use the swap for the older data. Essentially, having swap space as a failsafe for when your system’s physical memory is depleted can be a good safety net against crashes on systems with non-SSD storage available.

    Determine the size of the Swap we actually need.

    This process is made so much easier by using the below calculator

    https://pickwicksoft.github.io/swapcalc/

    Admittedly, if you only had 1Gb RAM, the SWAP would be default at 1Gb. You can play with the various configurations here to get the results you need, but be honest - don’t make your system out to be something it isn’t, because otherwise, you’ll create more problems than you set out to resolve.

    Swap space refers to a designated portion of hard drive storage that’s reserved for temporary data storage by the operating system when the RAM can’t accommodate it any longer. This allows for an expansion of the data that your server can hold in its active memory, though with certain conditions. The swap area on the hard drive comes into play primarily when there isn’t enough room left in the RAM to hold active application data.

    The data that gets written to the disk is notably slower than the data stored in RAM. Nevertheless, the operating system prioritizes keeping currently used application data in memory and employs swap for older data. Having swap space as a fallback when your system’s RAM is exhausted can serve as a valuable safeguard against out-of-memory errors, especially on systems with traditional non-SSD storage.

    Verifying the System for Swap Information

    Before proceeding, it’s advisable to confirm whether your system already has existing swap space. While it’s possible to have multiple swap files or swap partitions, typically one should suffice.

    You can check if your system has any configured swap by executing:

    sudo swapon --show

    If you receive no output, it means your system presently lacks swap space.

    You can also confirm the absence of active swap using the free utility:

    free -h

    As evident in the output, there is no active swap on the system, as shown in the Swap row.

    total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 981Mi 122Mi 647Mi 0.0Ki 211Mi 714Mi SWAP: 0B 0B 0B Assessing Available Space on the Hard Drive Partition

    Before creating a swap file, it’s essential to check the current disk usage to ensure you have enough available space. This can be done by entering

    df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on tmpfs 1.6G 876K 1.6G 1% /run /dev/sda1 150G 65G 80G 45% / tmpfs 7.7G 0 7.7G 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock /dev/sda15 253M 6.1M 246M 3% /boot/efi tmpfs 1.6G 0 1.6G 0% /run/user/1009

    The device with / in the Mounted on column is our disk in this case. We have sufficient remaining space available - 65G used. Your availability will obviously be different.

    The appropriate size of a swap space can vary according to personal preferences and application requirements. Typically, an amount equivalent to or double the system’s RAM is a good starting point. For a simple RAM fallback, anything over 4G of swap is usually deemed unnecessary.

    Creating a Swap File

    Now that you’ve determined the available hard drive space, you can generate a swap file on your file system. A file of your desired size, named ‘swapfile,’ will be allocated in your root directory (/).

    The recommended method for creating a swap file is by using the fallocate program, which instantly generates a file of the specified size. For instance, if your server has 1G of RAM, you can create a 1G file as follows:

    sudo fallocate -l 1G /swapfile

    You can confirm the correct space allocation by running:

    ls -lh /swapfile

    The file will be created with the appropriate space allocation.

    Activating the Swap File

    Now that you have a correctly sized file, it’s time to turn it into swap space. Initially, you must restrict file access to only root users, enhancing security. To achieve this, execute:

    sudo chmod 600 /swapfile

    You can verify the permission change with:

    ls -lh /swapfile

    As seen in the output, only the root user has read and write permissions.

    Next, mark the file as swap space with:

    sudo mkswap /swapfile

    Afterward, enable the swap file to allow your system to utilize it:

    sudo swapon /swapfile

    You can verify the availability of swap by executing:

    sudo swapon --show

    Finally, recheck the output of the free utility to confirm the setup:

    free -h Making the Swap File Permanent

    The changes made enable the swap file for the current session, but they won’t persist through a system reboot. To ensure your swap settings remain, you can add the swap file information to your /etc/fstab file. Here’s how you can do it:

    Back up the /etc/fstab file as a precaution:

    sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

    Add the swap file information to the end of your /etc/fstab file with:

    echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab Adjusting Swap Settings

    There are several settings you can configure to influence your system’s performance with swap. Two key settings are the swappiness property and the cache pressure setting:

    Swappiness Property: This parameter determines how often data is swapped from RAM to the swap space. A value between 0 and 100 represents a percentage. Lower values (close to 0) mean less frequent swapping, while higher values (closer to 100) encourage more swapping. You can check the current swappiness value with:

    cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

    You can set a different value using the sysctl command. For example, to set the swappiness to 10:

    sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10

    This setting persists until the next reboot, but you can make it permanent by adding it to your /etc/sysctl.conf file.

    Cache Pressure Setting: This setting affects how the system caches inode and dentry information over other data. Lower values, like 50, make the system cache this information more conservatively. You can check the current cache pressure value with:

    cat /proc/sys/vm/vfs_cache_pressure

    To set a different value, use the sysctl command and update your /etc/sysctl.conf file as you did with the swappiness setting.

  • 1 Votes
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    @DownPW it’s your only realistic option at this stage.

  • 0 Votes
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    @DownPW it’s in relation to the response I provided above

  • 3 Votes
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    @Panda You should be able to use {% javscript %} as shown in this video - it’s quite the watch, but very educational, and provides insight as to how this works - see below screenshot for an example

    cdb160e9-d955-498c-b921-982db2986e2b-image.png

  • 11 Votes
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    @DownPW Seems fine.

  • 1 Votes
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    Released, who is using and pls share with us your experincess 🙂

  • 3 Votes
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    @crazycells hi - no security reason, or anything specific in this case. However, the nfinx.conf I posted was from my Dev environment which uses this port as a way of not interfering with production.

    And yes, I use clustering on this site with three instances.

  • 14 Votes
    69 Posts
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    @phenomlab

    Seems to be better with some scaling fix for redis on redis.conf. I haven’t seen the message yet since the changes I made

    # I increase it to the value of /proc/sys/net/core/somaxconn tcp-backlog 4096 # I'm uncommenting because it can slow down Redis. Uncommented by default !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #save 900 1 #save 300 10 #save 60 10000

    If you have other Redis optimizations. I take all your advice

    https://severalnines.com/blog/performance-tuning-redis/