How much 'work' is it to support a nodebb install?

[qwinter]

Asking here for obvious reasons as we are talking on one such nodebb/cloudron instance
I've never done anything with nodebb. I see it has plugins, and we would need some. But coming from some terrible years with WP, I fear touching plugins as it's hell on earth to update them or make sure they are working well together. Sometimes code quality is ungodly. And you only know it after you are running with them. Sometimes the maintainers disappear. Is this the case for nodebb plugins? Is there any place that list 'reputable' plugins?

Also, what kind of VPS would you recommend? Something that will have staying power. I'm leaning towards racknerd because of LET recommendations, but I'm not sure how much staying power they have. Apparently these low-end things dissappear often. I'm not so constrained to be low end, I'm going to host 5 apps or more (two of them private, low traffic nodebb forums), so I'm happy investing in a good vps.

[nebulon]

Overall we have a good experience with nodebb (this instance is also running of course on Cloudron). We have a couple of plugins enabled, but as with all app plugins, they vary in quality and sometimes break, if an app update breaks plugin API compatibility. In such cases though it is easy with Cloudron to just rollback the nodebb version and report the issue with the plugin authors for a fix.

Resource wise, this is really hard to say upfront. Heavily depends on the active user count. But also here you should be able to easy scale up your server with Cloudron if need be. The minimum memory for a nodebb instance is 1Gb, so maybe if you have 5 such instances, I would start with 5Gb main memory VPS and see how that fares. Just make sure to not use a low-end provider.

[timconsidine]

@qwinter Common questions for those new to Cloudron .... and I find myself asking them too, even after getting to know the platform.

Observations :

• just try it.
  This helps you learn how super slick Cloudron is.
  Fire an app up.
  Heck, fire it up 5 times on different subdomains (locations).
  Destroy them (stop / uninstall)
  Rejoice at the end that it was easy and the sky didn't fall in.
  This kind of process lets you answer 'how difficult will it be' from your own perspective.
  'How difficult' is very subjective, many here wouldn't blink about something which I scratch my head on.
• it's kinda similar with VPS choice.
  Just start somewhere, with a level you can afford.
  Cloudron is super-slick when it comes to moving from one VPS to another.
  Choosing a "low" (all subjective) tier is not an obstacle to getting started.
  If you need more, then most VPS hosters allow an upgrade.
  And you're answering your own question on what level of resources required.
  And Cloudron will give (99/100) the slickest migration you have ever seen.

Your questions are sensible. My experience when asking the exact same ones was that getting advice was good, but ultimately less relevant to just actually doing it.

Jump in - the water's warm !

[jdaviescoates]

Well said @timconsidine!