The endorsement feature slightly fell through due to a lack of time. I (@bnolinn) was in charge of this feature and I was not able to get my nodebb running until 7 days before the project was due despite heavy efforts. After I got my NodeBB up and running, I had limited time to implement the feature as any code changes before were fairly useless if I could not see how changing code affected the UI for NodeBB. I still made good progress on implementing the feature, but things like strong test cases and smaller aspects of the feature fell through.

The private post feature was split into two main subtasks: implementing the frontend and the backend. The frontend implementation involved adding checkboxes to toggle private posting and was completed by (@pbortey). The backend was the responsibility of (@intchrkl). The implementation of the backend involved adding a field to store the isPrivate field which is a boolean flag to indicate whether a post is private to just the student and instructors. However, this backend implementation fell through and was not completed despite best efforts to do so. When trying to run NodeBB, there were many problems and troubleshooting the setup proved to be more challenging than expected. The main issue was getting NodeBB to run locally, as there were repeated difficulties with configuring the database and test_database properly. Additionally, the backend implementation turned out to be more complex than initially estimated because the private post feature is deeply interconnected with multiple parts of the codebase. Making changes to one file often introduced errors in other dependent files, leading to numerous failed test cases. These cascading issues made debugging and implementing the feature far more time-consuming than anticipated, ultimately causing the backend implementation to stall.