Instructor and TA tags

[cirex-web]

TA/Instructor badges

This feature forces all users in the instructor and TA groups to have a badge next to their replies and posts. NodeBB does offer badges already, but it's opt-in per user and is by-default disabled when a user joins a group. This change makes it by-default enabled and does not allow users to hide the badge once they've joined a group. (this restriction only applies to groups called "ta" or "instructor")

closes #24 (I ultimately decided not to display student tags as well since if a user is not a TA or instructor, they must be a student)

User Testing

1. Create a ta or instructor group
2. Click Edit to edit group settings

3. Enable Show Badge. Feel free to customize the title, icon, and color of the badge.

4. Press Save Changes
5. You should now see the TA badge next to your username

Unit Testing

In test/user.js, I wrote the test 'should force instructor group onto groupTitleArray even if user deselects it' to test functionality. We set up the test by creating and joining the groups ta, instructor, and other-group. The subsequent User.updateProfile(testUid, { groupTitle: '[]', uid: testUid }) call is akin to the user going into their settings and setting the group badge display to be false for all groups. We then verify that when getting user data, the ta and instructor groups are still present in the groupTitleArray field. This test covers all of the changed lines of code.

I've also added unit testing for my earlier endorsement feature and put everything in a UserGuide.md file

[railway-app]

🚅 Deployed to the nodebb-spring-26-clean-cod-pr-36 environment in Clean Code Team (nodebb)

Service	Status	Web	Updated (UTC)
nodebb-spring-26-clean-code	✅ Success (View Logs)	Web	Feb 13, 2026 at 2:18 am

[coveralls]

Pull Request Test Coverage Report for Build 21972086049

Details

• 11 of 11 (100.0%) changed or added relevant lines in 3 files are covered.
• 7 unchanged lines in 1 file lost coverage.
• Overall coverage decreased (-0.01%) to 78.878%

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Files with Coverage Reduction	New Missed Lines	%
src/user/approval.js	7	83.9%

Totals
Change from base Build 21888516342:	-0.01%
Covered Lines:	25392
Relevant Lines:	30361

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💛 - Coveralls

[JoshuaNam]

Looks good to me, nice job adding unit tests to check. I see green lights for the merge as well.