NodeBB 1.15.0 - Home Again But Still Hard At Work

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 that certainly won't stop us from continuing to improve NodeBB, including fast-tracking a long-planned feature.

Write API Merged Into Core

This was originally meant to be a part of version 2.0, but instead we decided to move ahead and bring it out even sooner. For those who had previously been using the Write API plug-in, it should be a simple switch from the v2 endpoint to the new v3 endpoint, although it is wise to check the breaking changes to see if you are affected. Note that you can continue to use the plugin as it will not conflict with the new API. Eventually we will expand this API with GET routes and make it a complete API, but for now retrieving data from NodeBB can still be done by prepending /api to all page routes. (As a reminder, we recently released a list of all routes at https://docs.nodebb.org/api/).

Flags Improvements

The previous release included a number of moderation improvements, and we've continued the work on flags to make it more usable:

• Multiple flag reports are now consolidated into a single flag, so duplicate reports for the same piece of content are now simply added to the existing flag rather than generating multiple reports
• Flags page has been updated to allow for additional functionality (sorting, and bulk actions)

Other Changes

• Progressive Web Application enhancements – NodeBB is now "installable" from mobile devices to your home screen, and should act like an app now ** This is one of the starting points to eventually allowing NodeBB to be accessible while offline, just like a native app
• "Verified Users" is now a separate system group, allowing you to segment privileges and control category access to those specific users ** Verified users are those users who have confirmed (or "verified") their email address
• Able to search a particular categories including its children ** Before, you had to select all of the categories, including its children
• And finally because we're always thinking about performance, Baris Usakli has made a number of optimizations that should allow NodeBB to handle more traffic

Be sure to check out the breaking changes at https://community.nodebb.org/topic/14917/1-15-0-breaking-changes. As always we recommend backing up your database, and upgrading at your earliest convenience. If you are running your own server and encounter any issues, please drop a post on the community support forum. If you are a hosting client of with us, please drop a line to support@nodebb.org to schedule a time for our team to perform the upgrade.