iacas Posted January 14, 2021 Share Posted January 14, 2021 I allow people to post before registering, but my database has 209 rows of posts with author_id=0. Most of the newer ones are spam, some of the older ones are clearly posts that guests made but then didn't register, and a few in the middle are posts made by someone who requested his account be deleted. Is there a safe way to expunge the crap from the forums_posts database, but keep the posts attributed to the deleted member (and maybe any made in the last 15 days in case the person wants to return to register)? Can the "old" or "bad" posts simply be deleted in the database, or will that muck up a table somewhere else? Some of these posts date back to 2014. Those guys aren't registering for the forum any time soon to publish those old posts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoffeeCake Posted January 14, 2021 Share Posted January 14, 2021 The "post before registering" feature automatically deletes posts after a period of time (one week) of the person posting not registering through a scheduled task. You can safely ignore these rows, however if you'd like to address why they haven't been deleted, you can open a support ticket. Posts will have an author_id of 0 in instances where a member was deleted as well, as you noted. Posts that are made "before registering" have a value of -3 in the column 'queued'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted January 14, 2021 Share Posted January 14, 2021 Indeed, the "post before register" feature didn't even exist in 2014 so some of these posts you are looking at are simply posts attributed to a guest, and not specifically posts made by a guest since the new feature was introduced. You'd have to look at the old posts to gather some more information really. They could have been made by a user who has since been deleted, you may have allowed guests to post at some point, there may have been a bug in a previous version of the software - it's difficult to definitively give a blanket answer for 209 posts dating back to 2014 on this end I'm afraid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iacas Posted January 15, 2021 Author Share Posted January 15, 2021 (edited) 9 hours ago, bfarber said: Indeed, the "post before register" feature didn't even exist in 2014 so some of these posts you are looking at are simply posts attributed to a guest, and not specifically posts made by a guest since the new feature was introduced. You'd have to look at the old posts to gather some more information really. They could have been made by a user who has since been deleted, you may have allowed guests to post at some point, there may have been a bug in a previous version of the software - it's difficult to definitively give a blanket answer for 209 posts dating back to 2014 on this end I'm afraid. Thanks, yeah, I went through them one by one. There were about 20 from a deleted account, like I'd mentioned, and a surprising number (of OLD posts) that were marked as -3 in queued. I changed a lot of them to 1 so they'd show up in the approval queue and I could approve or delete them. Who knows… maybe we missed them at the time. Got the list down to about 40, not counting the 30-50 spammy posts by bots that will be removed if they don't register (they won't) within the next week or two. So, really, most of the old stuff was just old guest posts that may or may not have had the right flags in the database. But, every action except changing some of those columns was done in the UI on the site, either in the ModCP or the ACP, so whatever needed to be done to affect other tables I'm sure was done. Thank you for taking the time, @bfarber. Edited January 15, 2021 by iacas bfarber 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iacas Posted March 15, 2021 Author Share Posted March 15, 2021 I'm back again… Slightly OCD. Is there a way to see these "pending" posts in the user interface, the ACP, anywhere on the site? I'd love to delete the 500 of these… If for no other reason than to just clear them out so I don't have to see them in my forums_posts table. I have over 850 of these from the past few days, just from the one IP address. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoffeeCake Posted March 15, 2021 Share Posted March 15, 2021 2 hours ago, iacas said: Is there a way to see these "pending" posts in the user interface, the ACP, anywhere on the site? Not out of the box. Adriano has an extension you can purchase though: Adriano Faria 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted March 15, 2021 Share Posted March 15, 2021 No, the intention is that for all intents and purposes these posts "don't exist" unless the guest completes their registration. They should be deleted automatically on their own via a task already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iacas Posted March 16, 2021 Author Share Posted March 16, 2021 My point is that it might be nice to see them somewhere in the ACP, because I had 872 from one IP address (which I might like to block), and could have easily had more. These "guest" posts, even if they never make it to the site, still can suck up server resources. I had 1200+ total. Showing them in the ACP somewhere (with IP address, email, etc.) might let an admin notice a trend like what happened to me, and take an action. 19 hours ago, CoffeeCake said: Not out of the box. Adriano has an extension you can purchase though: Thank you. I'll look into that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts