Hi there - is my free Nabble forum going to have advertising on it?

[Deanna Freedom]

Hi there, I've just set up a forum with Nabble after doing a lot of reading of the features and help pages, and I thought it was not only free but advertising-free. Have I got that wrong? Now that I've set it up I see it says I've got 180 days of a trial period and then a link to remove ads...$5/month.

[GregChapman]

Hi Deanna,

Deanna Freedom wrote

I've just set up a forum with Nabble after doing a lot of reading of the features and help pages, and I thought it was not only free but advertising-free. Have I got that wrong?

Unfortunately, yes. For several years Nabble has been showing ads after a trial period. Only the pricing structure has changed recently.

[Deanna Freedom]

Thanks Greg.

It's probably time someone updated the help page that says:

Is Nabble really free?

Yes. Nabble is absolutely free and will remain free to the users. This includes the end users, mailing list owners, and webmasters. If your website uses Nabble as a hosted forum or a list archive, be assured that there is no limit on traffic or disk space, no hosting fees, no pay-for versions or label schemes. Nabble is just free.

Anyway, having got one and embedded it and tried it out a bit, I'm thinking of switching to something else. I'm actually just trying out different forum options for a hobby group website. I see a number of small issues with Nabble forums, some of which might be fixable, but which probably require a bit of coding, so I'm thinking it might be better for us to have a linked forum instead of embedded.

Thank you for your kind support though.

Deanna

[GregChapman]

Deanna Freedom wrote

It's probably time someone updated the help page

Unfortunately, Nabble is extremely slow to update its documentation. they do almost nightly updates to code as they develop the product, but are not even very good at even posting posting significant changes at:
http://support.nabble.com/Nabble-Latest-Features-f1559156.html

Anyway, having got one and embedded it and tried it out a bit, I'm thinking of switching to something else. I'm actually just trying out different forum options for a hobby group website. I see a number of small issues with Nabble forums, some of which might be fixable, but which probably require a bit of coding, so I'm thinking it might be better for us to have a linked forum instead of embedded.

I have not yet found anything as flexible as Nabble. Most things are eminently fixable. I feel that having an embedded forum is vastly superior to a linked one, as you lose the look and feel of your main site with any linked forum I've encountered.
Here's some examples that I maintain:
http://www.rustonreaches.co.uk/blog.html
http://www.seahawk17.org.uk/forum.htm

[Deanna Freedom]

Hi Greg,

There are advantages and disadvantages, I guess, with embedded forums. I don't know enough about web coding to know if the Refresh issue can be fixed. It's a minor irritation, but it bugs me. Have you noticed it? Normally when you're on the web, hitting refresh refreshes the page. On an embedded forum - at least the ones I've tried so far (2 of my experimental ones and now yours) - the address in the browser doesn't change as you navigate, and hence hitting Refresh loads the forum index page rather than where you were. It's minor, but it's such a basic feature of navigating the web that I find it annoying. As well as Refresh, the same problem would occur if you navigate away from the thread you're on and then go Back.

There are some interesting features of Nabble. All the integration with email lists/newsgroups and the fact that you can take part via email will have its uses. I was tempted by that email thing a bit, and I'm emailing my reply now. OTOH, it's not a great deal different to clicking on a link to take you to the topic in a browser. I'm looking for a forum I can set up for general users (an allotment association - and some of us are getting on a bit) and I also find some of the Nabble features and layouts pretty confusing. Replying last time, which I did in the browser, I wanted to put that bit in bold, and there isn't a bold button. OK, I'll put it in html, I thought, easy - forgetting that all my paragraphs would be concatenated unless I put paragraph or line break tags in as well! Then if you reply to an email leaving in older text, as most of us do habitually, that all gets quoted on the forum, including all the superfluous bits, unsubscribe links, your antivirus has checked this email, you name it! What forum doesn't have basic formatting for text? Answer: Nabble. Maybe there's a way and I missed it. The old folks on my forum are going to end up in a mess in no time.

The topic sections and topics all seem to be mixed up on Nabble, which is confusing. And yeah, for people like me, a good upkeep of the help files is really important. I'm not a novice - I ran a forum for years and do a fair bit of programming - but I don't do much web stuff, so up-to-date help is worth a lot to me.

I've found another embeddable forum host which, for about the same money (less, in fact) for the ad free version, does a much better job on the things that are important to me. It might be bad form to mention them by name on a rival's help forum. They took a bit more scrolling through the search results. It has way better features - the admin options are packed with tweaks you can do without any coding. It's way better structured. Its help files are excellent. And for the more advanced tweaks, they have detailed guidance. Even integrated chat rooms. It's so good that I'm even wondering if not being able to refresh the page you're on is such a big deal...I've just emailed them to ask if there's a fix for that.

But a linked forum isn't such a bad idea either. Many of them allow you to grab the styles from your website and put them in your forum, or you could just tweak to make them similar. Yes, you end up with two different sites, but with links between them, it's not a big difference from being on different sections of the same site.

Cheers,
Deanna

---

This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

[GregChapman]

Hi,

Deanna Freedom wrote

Normally when you're on the web, hitting refresh refreshes the page.

There seems to be some confusion about what to expect here.

When you refresh a page it fetches a new version from the server. If that page happens to include a link to some other server, then it calls for that link as well - exactly as you would expect and exactly the link that appears in the original page. It happens everywhere on the web - you'll see it happen with embedded Google Maps, embedded YouTube videos, embedded anything.

Of course, if you've been zooming the map or watching a second video with a link after the first has played and you refresh the "outer" page then the original links in that "outer" page are refreshed too, to show what was originally shown on that page.

However, unlike Google Maps, YouTube and the rest, Nabble offers a "Refresh" link on every page. so if you want to refresh the forum, you click the forum's "Refresh " link! Simple!

the same problem would occur if you navigate away from the thread you're on and then go Back.

I don't understand what you mean by "the same problem"?

If you mean you want to jump back to the page that is specified as the one that is embedded on the site's main page, well then you would use the browser's refresh facility, and not the forum's "Refresh" link.

There are some interesting features of Nabble. All the integration with email lists/newsgroups and the fact that you can take part via email will have its uses. I was tempted by that email thing a bit, and I'm emailing my reply now. OTOH, it's not a great deal different to clicking on a link to take you to the topic in a browser.

Be very careful with your terminology. "Newsgroups" (aka "Usenet")  uses NNTP protocol and that does not relate at all to email any more than email does to the web. Mail Lists and newsgroups are significantly different technologies. Nabble does not provide a gateway to newsgroups.

As you rightly suggest, far more significant, is the impact of mixing email and web users of a Nabble forum. I always caution those who get excited about Nabble's integration of Mail List and Forum capabilities. It can lead to very frustrated forum users, as you have already worked out... (because of the clutter created when someone makes a short top-posted one line replies over multiple quotes of earlier messages.)

I would always advise being very clear to users whether you are providing a forum, when all replies should be posted via the web, or a mail list archive where you should lock all topics and only allow replies by email.

The ultimate would be disabling the reply facility, which is possible with tweaks of the NAML code.

I'm looking for a forum I can set up for general users (an allotment association - and some of us are getting on a bit) and I also find some of the Nabble features and layouts pretty confusing.

To fully appreciate them you need to experiment. I believe it is essential to create a test forum with three or four sub-forums, all with meaningful titles and descriptions and a number of topics and replies, several, to each topic,
You need all that in place to appreciate the differences in the "Applications" to help you decide what will suit your requirements and target audience the best.  You also need all that in place  to check out how "Topics View", "Main Page" and the "Classic", "List" and "Threaded" views work.

Replying last time, which I did in the browser, I wanted to put that bit in bold, and there isn't a bold button.

Yes there is. It's a very traditional "B" button over the message composition box. Select the text to be emboldened and click the "B" button! Couldn't be simpler!

 OK, I'll put it in html, I thought, easy - forgetting that all my paragraphs would be concatenated unless I put paragraph or line break tags in as well!

I view the HTML option as for those using the "Blog" and "News" applications only. However, I do use the feature for the locked posts I create my FAQ sections of my forum.

For your audience and market I'd tell them to ignore it.

The topic sections and topics all seem to be mixed up on Nabble, which is confusing.

I can only assume you have not found the appropriate application or have unpinned sub-forums that have been created, have become confused by switching away from "Classic" view, and "Main Page". I do not recognise  as the norm, what you describe.

And yeah, for people like me, a good upkeep of the help files is really important.

I am not going to attempt to defend Nabble's extremely poor level of documentation, the more so when there are near weekly updates to the code, often minor bug-fixes, but sometimes significant changes the the user interface, that go completely undocumented.

I've found another embeddable forum host which, for about the same money (less, in fact) for the ad free version, does a much better job on the things that are important to me. It might be bad form to mention them by name on a rival's help forum.

I'd say mention the name. Nabble will then know what users consider their rivals are and have a chance to improve their offering (and I've have a chance to look at the alternative too!).

[Deanna Freedom]

GregChapman wrote

Deanna Freedom wrote

Normally when you're on the web, hitting refresh refreshes the page.

There seems to be some confusion about what to expect here.

When you refresh a page it fetches a new version from the server. If that page happens to include a link to some other server, then it calls for that link as well - exactly as you would expect and exactly the link that appears in the original page. It happens everywhere on the web - you'll see it happen with embedded Google Maps, embedded YouTube videos, embedded anything.

Of course, if you've been zooming the map or watching a second video with a link after the first has played and you refresh the "outer" page then the original links in that "outer" page are refreshed too, to show what was originally shown on that page.

However, unlike Google Maps, YouTube and the rest, Nabble offers a "Refresh" link on every page. so if you want to refresh the forum, you click the forum's "Refresh " link! Simple!

No there's no confusion about what to expect and I understand why it happens. I hadn't used an embedded forum before and didn't think about the problem until it happened. I don't like it. It undermines the often stated benefit of having a forum embedded "seamlessly into your website" so that it seems just a part of it. It doesn't. However, the "Refresh" link is a reasonable workaround. You have to remember to use it, and you have to scroll to the top to use it. And you can't therefore just quickly hit Refresh to see if someone's replied or your wifi's died - whatever.

the same problem would occur if you navigate away from the thread you're on and then go Back.

I don't understand what you mean by "the same problem"?

If you mean you want to jump back to the page that is specified as the one that is embedded on the site's main page, well then you would use the browser's refresh facility, and not the forum's "Refresh" link.

Similarly to refreshing, if you go forward, follow a link, and then go back using the browser's Back function, you will return to the index of the embedded forum or whatever is its default page. For example, I often click links in forums without a modifier because most forums open links in a new tab. If I found I'd left the conversation inadvertently and tried to go back, I'd not be in the conversation anymore, let alone at the correct scroll position, but at the index again. I'd have lost my place and have to drill down to find it again. If you're on p15 of a deeply nested discussion, this would be inconvenient. That's what I was thinking. I don't know whether Nabble opens links in the same tab or not, BTW - just thinking of possible issues. I'll click on the one I've posted in a mo and find out! ...although this forum navigates ok I think.

Be very careful with your terminology. "Newsgroups" (aka "Usenet")  uses NNTP protocol and that does not relate at all to email any more than email does to the web. Mail Lists and newsgroups are significantly different technologies. Nabble does not provide a gateway to newsgroups.

Yeah, it was late.

Replying last time, which I did in the browser, I wanted to put that bit in bold, and there isn't a bold button.

Yes there is. It's a very traditional "B" button over the message composition box. Select the text to be emboldened and click the "B" button! Couldn't be simpler!

Yikes, it must have been very late!   Apologies, Nabble, my bad.

I view the HTML option as for those using the "Blog" and "News" applications only. However, I do use the feature for the locked posts I create my FAQ sections of my forum.

Actually, replying now I've just realised how this is somewhat like writing a piece of HTML text, since it inserts HTML code for smileys and formatting, etc.  I've just thought how important reply composition is for newbies. I can't remember seeing too many WISIWIG ones, and they're often BBCode with square brackets. They're a constant source of misquoting and other mistakes...actually probably a good argument for replying in your email if it chops a quote with CRs. Hmmm, maybe Nabble's not that mad after all.

For your audience and market I'd tell them to ignore it.

I think what I'm doing now - editing this without deliberately making it HTML Format - would be hard for them. It's pretty hard for me. But it's probably not that much worse than most. I'm trying to remember if Proboards have a wisiwig editor.

The topic sections and topics all seem to be mixed up on Nabble, which is confusing.

I can only assume you have not found the appropriate application or have unpinned sub-forums that have been created, have become confused by switching away from "Classic" view, and "Main Page". I do not recognise  as the norm, what you describe.

I navigated to a number of examples of Nabble forums and they were almost all like that. I did try to get my head round pinning forums, and then tried the feature out. I'm still confused by what my forum did, but would probably get it with more sub-forums and longer use. I would probably not post topics in the top level - that's the way I like a forum organised -if you have sub-forums, make the index page just a list of them (or at least just a few admin-type announcement posts). Since I've had absolutely no issue like that with the other embedded forum I've tried, nor with the Proboards forum I ran for years, I can only think it's something weird about how Nabble organises items.

I've found another embeddable forum host which, for about the same money (less, in fact) for the ad free version, does a much better job on the things that are important to me. It might be bad form to mention them by name on a rival's help forum.

I'd say mention the name. Nabble will then know what users consider their rivals are and have a chance to improve their offering (and I've have a chance to look at the alternative too!).

Good points. It's Website Toolbox (WT). To me it looks superior in several ways. The WT embedded forum was very nicely formatted on my tiny smartphone. The Nabble one was unreadable without pinching and scrolling about. Maybe something else fixable with NAML code. OTOH, there isn't a Refresh link, so they haven't put that workaround in. I've noticed something interesting about the navigation. If you jump straight to a sub-forum or topic from an email notification or whatever, you can browse from there and the address bar shows the non-embedded version of the forum, so it refreshes correctly. But the breadcrumb links at the top start with your main site's page title, like "Site Forum >> News >> Announcement of Something". As soon as you go to the main site link, the browser address shows that address, and any further navigation through the forum doesn't change that, so you lose the normal Refresh. This is potentially another source of confusion, sometimes working one way, sometimes another. I'm really starting to wonder if "the same look and feel" is really worth the downside of embedding.

[GregChapman]

Hi Deanna,

Deanna Freedom wrote

No there's no confusion about what to expect and I understand why it happens.

Fair enough. When posting here I never know at what level to pitch a response. Check responses to some of my posts and you see I frequently get it wrong and offend.

the same problem would occur if you navigate away from the thread you're on and then go Back.

I don't understand what you mean by "the same problem"?

Similarly to refreshing, if you go forward, follow a link, and then go back using the browser's Back function,

Ah! I avoid "Back" buttons like the plague. I am unusual in that I always wheel-click links on any site to open links in new tabs, so I never encounter your back button problem.

If you're on p15 of a deeply nested discussion, this would be inconvenient. That's what I was thinking. I don't know whether Nabble opens links in the same tab or not, BTW - just thinking of possible issues.

I think you'll find the solution to that is "Threaded View", rather than classic, though depending on the complexity of the topic, some might prefer the simpler "List" view.

Actually, replying now I've just realised how this is somewhat like writing a piece of HTML text, since it inserts HTML code for smileys and formatting, etc.  I've just thought how important reply composition is for newbies.

Others have raised this issue. You'll find topics and potential solutions for it by editing the NAML code to introduce an external editor, but from what I've read of those topics the results are not ideal. They include:
http://support.nabble.com/Images-being-stored-on-Froala-instead-of-my-site-tp7592421.html
http://support.nabble.com/Foala-editor-implementation-questions-tp7592373.html

I have found that newbies don't bother with any formatting at all, other than inserting pictures and I always have to provide FAQs to help people out. e.g.
http://seahawk-forum.968426.n3.nabble.com/Inserting-Images-in-the-Forum-tp1599211.html 

I think what I'm doing now - editing this without deliberately making it HTML Format - would be hard for them. It's pretty hard for me. But it's probably not that much worse than most. I'm trying to remember if Proboards have a wisiwig editor.

Apart from those I see in this forum who are clearly used to coding HTML I don't think I have ever seen a user ever attempt inserted quoting as you (and I) are doing.

I find that in 99% of forums, topic posts are a brief and don't require more than a one paragraph answer. Where someone makes a long post with a number of points and people choose to reply to all the points in the original message, they reply with a number of paragraphs in similar style to the original author with no quoting at all. The original text appears immediately above in the Classic view forum, so there is no problem with this for new forum users who comes to the topic later. The whole thing is simple to read straight down the page.

The only issue comes when the administrator decides that topic-drift has set in and it requires splitting, but there are menu options for this in Nabble for a user with administrator status that are relatively straight forward to use.

[re mixed topic and sub-forums]

I navigated to a number of examples of Nabble forums and they were almost all like that. I did try to get my head round pinning forums, and then tried the feature out. I'm still confused by what my forum did, but would probably get it with more sub-forums and longer use. I would probably not post topics in the top level - that's the way I like a forum organised -if you have sub-forums, make the index page just a list of them (or at least just a few admin-type announcement posts).

I think I encountered the problem you describe. I confess I do not use Nabble's "Forum" application for the top level on any of my sites. I abandoned it long ago in favour of "Mixed" and "Category", though I can see that "Board" might work for some. Category and Board remove posting at the top level automatically. With Mixed, you need to adjust the User Permissions, to avoid posts at the top level, but once done a user who used the "New Topic" link at the top of the page is presented with a list of sub-forums in which they are permitted to post and they must select one before they reach the composition screen. It's a system that works very well for even newbie users.

Website Toolbox (WT).

I'll take a look!

To me it looks superior in several ways. The WT embedded forum was very nicely formatted on my tiny smartphone. The Nabble one was unreadable without pinching and scrolling about. Maybe something else fixable with NAML code.

There are the "Responsiveness" options which improve things on a small screen, but they are not perfect yet. Much can depend on the site in which the forum is embedded. I have not yet optimised my SeaHawk site, and the forum suffers accordingly. However, my Muddy Broad Blues Band site is Google classified "Mobile Friendly" and works well enough (Unfortunately, as a casual visitor you won't see much of the forum and can only read what's there, not post.)
[Re: Nabble]

I've noticed something interesting about the navigation. If you jump straight to a sub-forum or topic from an email notification or whatever, you can browse from there and the address bar shows the non-embedded version of the forum, so it refreshes correctly. But the breadcrumb links at the top start with your main site's page title, like "Site Forum >> News >> Announcement of Something". As soon as you go to the main site link, the browser address shows that address, and any further navigation through the forum doesn't change that, so you lose the normal Refresh.

You have not discovered the "Redirect to:" option on the "Embedding options" page. Use that to keep your forum permanently embedded, otherwise, you can easily jump out of embedding (especially if you wheel-click all links like me) and, as you have discovered you, from an subscription email, you won't get sent to the forum in its embedded state.  Whether you see redirection  as a benefit or disadvantage depends greatly on how your audience interacts with the forum and whether you promote your forum as a mail list archive or forum.

I'm really starting to wonder if "the same look and feel" is really worth the downside of embedding.

Keep experimenting. You haven't explored or come to terms with all the possibilities yet.

I confess I think your emphasis on reloading a page unusual. My belief is that most people never use it in their day to day browsing any more than they use the browser's "Back" button. Since the mid-1990s, when menus became the norm for navigation around sites, most people don't even use the back button, except in highly specialist cases.

I'm not saying Nabble is the ultimate answer to all possible users. In the end you may decide it is not for you. It depends on your audience. It's true that as an ordinary user, you do have to be a bit techie to take advantage of some of its options , but in my experience, 99.9% of forum users and 50% of forum administrators are not techies and in day to day use use their forum at only the most basic level, not even using bold or italic text and doing nothing more than insert pictures when posting.

[Deanna Freedom]

Hi Greg - no offence taken. Since I thought I was on my way out of nabble very soon after asking the original question, I thought further discussion would be pointless, but I have to say it has been very useful describing my thought process to you and getting your feedback. I'm responding more as an average Joe today, hit Reply and type. :) This has reminded me that I am a 'power user' when it comes to the client end of things, and my programming background skews my approach as well, even though I'm still struggling with Web protocols and stopped trying to keep up with HTML once everything went dynamic. I tried writing a website using CSS and hated it and still hate it. OTOH, I've done so much discussion on the major forum platforms, I've got an AutoHotkey script running all the time that I use to insert things like "[/quote]...some carriage returns and....[quote]" which in php boards is great for splitting a quoted post, ending a quoted paragraph and starting another, so you can type a reply in between. I've never seen a button for that, and I'm amazed nobody has programmed one - there you go, Nabble, a free gift from me! The usual quote button, putting them the other way round, is intuitive, but actually less useful, unless you copy and paste the original text, then start quoting passages, or remove the overall quoting from a quoted post.

Long story short, yes, these forum choices are horses for courses, and I'm pretty sold on Website Toolbox. Not only do they invest a minimum effort into keeping up with docs, they responded to my email query about the "Refresh" problem and the URL in the address bar. They're working on a fix in the next 30 days, meanwhile offered to do it manually for me and posted a link to a help page on creating a CNAME record for a subdomain so that you can tweak your forum's address (more homework!). Not only that, every time I open the help pages, now that I'm an admin of a forum, a chat invitation pops up at the bottom of the browser, and someone has answered a question for me there - all this while I'm on the free trial version. I'm not sure what the advertising will be like if/when it arrives, but the allotments association can probably afford $4 a month to avoid them if we don't like them. I'm also tempted by Proboards from earlier familiarity, but they used to serve unobtrusive text ads, which were also related to the content of the forum (in fact, when I suggested clubbing in to remove them, my users said they were helpful and to keep them!) - I don't know what they've got now to select subjects, but they're horrible banner ads (again, I've got AdBlocker running in my Firefox, but most people don't).

Besides, now it seems the embedding issues are fixable, I can't see much wrong with WT, but of course they won't suit everyone's needs or tastes. One thing missing, for instance, as far as I can see, is being able to reply to any post in a topic - you just reply to the whole thing (although you can quote any post). So there might be some of those "Sorry, I was talking to Steve" moments when people are posting at the same time. I don't see any seamless logins yet for social media, but who knows what's in the pipeline, and I kind of dislike Fartbook and Twatter and Gaggle owning the Web anyway. You can send people invites to a WT forum, so all they have to do is click on a link and think of a password.

Threaded views, mixed views, etc. are probably less likely to be used and more confusing to non-techies than quoting or posting pictures, but savvie audiences might like them. If I was starting with an email list, Nabble would probably be a no-brainer.

Thanks again
D

[NEWSAVVY]

You are more likely to get ads due to adware inside your own device, such as DNS Unlocker trojan http://malwareprotectioncenter.com/2015/08/25/dns-unlocker/

[Deanna Freedom]

Thanks for your reply, but surely not. If provision of the free nabble service is on the condition that they serve you adverts, it's somewhere in the region of 100% likely that you'll get ads from that source. Presumably, the chances of getting them from malware is something less.

Anyway, I'm hanging on to see what kind of ads they serve eventually (it's a long trial without them), before I decide whether I want to use it for something! Meanwhile, Website Toolbox is doing a good job for my little community site.

[Errico]

Hey man, it is silly to click on that ad!!! They can trigger computer viruses like Adchoices which is pretty hot now. Here's an instruction of Adchoices:http://www.pccaretips.com/blog/how-to-get-rid-of-adchoices-ads-completely.html