How to remove the uploads folder without breaking the forum?

[FabioPaz]

Hello, there.

The uploads folder of my forum is taking the majority of the space of my disk and I suspect that some versions of IPB during 11 years of use generated a lot of useless files that could be prevented as seen here: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/441756-a-lot-of-images-avatars-in-monthly-images-folder/?tab=comments#comment-2717096

Is there a way to remove the uploads folder and start from scratch ? Even if this makes users reupload their stuff...

I'm asking because the uploads folder is the most unnorganized thing I ever seen in my life. There's cssfiles, profile pictures, ads images all in the same place there... 

Any help would be appreciated. Maybe someone had the same problem...

 

[bfarber]

I wouldn't really recommend this personally, as it will break all user-uploaded content.

That said, you could remove all files directly in the uploads folder, all files in /uploads/logs/ and all folders starting with "monthly_" without breaking theme resources and javascript.

Your better option, probably, would be to move the folder to another larger disk on the server, or switch over to using Amazon S3.

[FabioPaz]

11 minutes ago, bfarber said:

I wouldn't really recommend this personally, as it will break all user-uploaded content.

That said, you could remove all files directly in the uploads folder, all files in /uploads/logs/ and all folders starting with "monthly_" without breaking theme resources and javascript.

Your better option, probably, would be to move the folder to another larger disk on the server, or switch over to using Amazon S3.

Thank you for your response.

Is there a way to remove all avatars and profile covers before and replace it by the default ones, so it wont show missing images ?

The reason I'm going too far with this, its because the uploads folder alone takes up to 80% of the entire SSD. Imagine the size of the daily, weekly and monthly backups, that already made me bought a new HD in the server.

I dont think using amazon s3 is viable right now ($$$), but thanks to provide a valid solution eitherway.

[bfarber]

Technically, yes - you could run a database query that will reset all users to the default profile photo.

Have you looked in uploads/logs/ to make sure there aren't any huge log files there by chance?