This is my first question on SO. Basically, I am attempting to create a sort of offline neighborhood forum. I have setup NodeBB to host a forum locally, but the problem is allowing users to connect. Eventually I plan to use a high-strength wireless router to broadcast an open network, and from there redirect all traffic to the local page. In the mean time, I was wondering if it would be possible to implement this with by means of an ad-hoc network. Broadcasting an ad-hoc network seems easy enough, but how might I redirect the traffic to the port running NodeBB? Any help or comments on the overall idea would be greatly appreciated.
By default, NodeBB listens on all network interfaces (0.0.0.0), so if you set up an ad-hoc network, anybody connected to your machine will be able to access it via MACHINE_IP:4567.
If you have your machine behind a NAT/Router, you'll have to forward port 4567 to your machine. Alternatively, you could translate requests from external port 80 to port 4567, though that is untested for NodeBB specifically.