usmf Posted February 18, 2021 Posted February 18, 2021 I'm pretty sure that I'm missing something, but so far I've not found a way to do this or come up with an answer in the Help Guides. Is there a way to set an individual board to delete topics that have not been posted in after a certain amount of days? I'd like to be able to set some to delete after 30 days and some to delete after 90 days. Thanks in advance for any help!
Miss_B Posted February 18, 2021 Posted February 18, 2021 10 minutes ago, usmf said: I'm pretty sure that I'm missing something, but so far I've not found a way to do this or come up with an answer in the Help Guides. Is there a way to set an individual board to delete topics that have not been posted in after a certain amount of days? I'd like to be able to set some to delete after 30 days and some to delete after 90 days. Thanks in advance for any help! Yes, there is a way, but it will require a custom plugin to accomplish that.
CoffeeCake Posted February 18, 2021 Posted February 18, 2021 You can archive threads, but that doesn't delete them. If you want them permanently erased or hidden, you'd have to do this with a custom plugin.
usmf Posted February 18, 2021 Author Posted February 18, 2021 So there is no way to set a board to delete posts that have been inactive for a specified number of days? Doesn't this seem like a basic function?
CoffeeCake Posted February 18, 2021 Posted February 18, 2021 Not out of the box, no. I'd guess that most customers wouldn't ask for content to be deleted automatically over time, and I'm not sure I've seen any software that does this natively. Not that it isn't a valid thing that may work for your community, yet you'd have to develop or commission a custom modification to do this.
Adriano Faria Posted February 18, 2021 Posted February 18, 2021 A better solution would be to archive them. People won’t be able to reply in these topics and they won’t show up in search results. They won’t also increase your DB size as they’re archived in another DB. Jordan Miller 1
usmf Posted February 18, 2021 Author Posted February 18, 2021 Thanks. I'm personally on several forums that have the option. This seems crazy. I will see about assigning a moderator to certain boards to delete content that's old, but that certainly seems like something the program should be capable of doing on its own. And I don't want to archive, I want to delete. Increasing DB size is not the issue. I don't want my server clogged up with old data.
CoffeeCake Posted February 18, 2021 Posted February 18, 2021 9 minutes ago, usmf said: certainly seems like something the program should be capable of doing on its own This would be a perfect candidate for an extension to be developed. The premise is rather simple, yet there are details to sort out. You'll need to think about if all things should be deleted after a certain period of time, or if certain things should not. Maybe you post something and you'd like it to stay forever, but people in other member groups should have their content deleted. Maybe it's only on specified forums. What if content had been promoted or locked or otherwise tagged in some way. Lots to consider, for sure.
usmf Posted February 18, 2021 Author Posted February 18, 2021 I've got some particular boards for short-term timely posts. Criteria would be simple -- if the thread has not been posted in for a certain period (30 or 90 days), then it needs to be deleted. Plain and simple. Complicated boards are moderated to take care of the big problems, but it would be nice if a simple timed delete option was added in the future.
Morrigan Posted February 18, 2021 Posted February 18, 2021 15 minutes ago, usmf said: I've got some particular boards for short-term timely posts. Criteria would be simple -- if the thread has not been posted in for a certain period (30 or 90 days), then it needs to be deleted. Plain and simple. Complicated boards are moderated to take care of the big problems, but it would be nice if a simple timed delete option was added in the future. I think the reason this isn't there is because its technically bad for SEO. By the 30 day mark they have been indexed by search engines. When you delete this content or its inaccessible it actually works against you, thus the reason why people are recommending other options. Overall, its your choice obviously. Perhaps you can poke Fosters to see about making it 4.5 compatible.
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