I inherited a forum that has massive amounts of spam posts, many of which are foreign-character spam. I can locate these easily in the database, but I don't want to have to delete them one by one through the board.
If it were a few hundred posts I'd do it by hand...but we're talking *thousands* of posts from what I can see so far. :-[
I could delete them en mass from the messages table with a few SQL commands but I don't know if that will cause problems in the database in terms of how SMF counts or orders the posts.
Can I just delete them directly from the table without causing problems?
Or can I delete them and then go into the Forum Maintenance section afterwards and tell it to "Recount all forum totals and statistics"? Would that work?
LainaaOr can I delete them and then go into the Forum Maintenance section afterwards and tell it to "Recount all forum totals and statistics"? Would that work?
This is probably the best way to do it. However if you choose to do it from the database side you will have to go to Forum Maintenance and find and repair any errors. Deleting posts/topics from the database will cause problems on the forums' end.
Hi MrMike, any updates on this? Did you try to do this, and did it work like you wished?
Lainaus käyttäjältä: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen - kesäkuu 14, 2011, 02:52:09 AP
Hi MrMike, any updates on this? Did you try to do this, and did it work like you wished?
No, I went at it the old-fashioned way. I used a wide variety of search terms (about 300) that were typically found in spammy posts, and I manually deleted them. There were about 22,000 posts deleted or so if I recall correctly. There are probably some very obscure ones still in there but I think the vast majority were cleaned out.
You can see the forum here: GameThinker.com (http://gamethinker.com/) and a little info on it here: SMF Showcase (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=435003.0)
I started with ~297,950 posts and ended up with ~276,800. The forum was converted from a VBulletin board that had crashed. It's much nicer in SMF. :)
I'm currently moving a phpBB board with ~15,000 posts to SMF 2.0. Initial testing of the conversion has gone very well and I hope to put it in the showcase here in a few days or a week.
Lainaus käyttäjältä: MrMike - kesäkuu 14, 2011, 03:46:59 AP
Lainaus käyttäjältä: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen - kesäkuu 14, 2011, 02:52:09 AP
Hi MrMike, any updates on this? Did you try to do this, and did it work like you wished?
No, I went at it the old-fashioned way. I used a wide variety of search terms (about 300) that were typically found in spammy posts, and I manually deleted them. There were about 22,000 posts deleted or so if I recall correctly. There are probably some very obscure ones still in there but I think the vast majority were cleaned out.
Well, that's how I would've done it too to be honest. Just to be on the safe side. But glad to hear you got the posts cleaned one way or the other ;)
I take it we can mark this solved then? :)
Lainaus käyttäjältä: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen - kesäkuu 14, 2011, 03:51:00 AP
Well, that's how I would've done it too to be honest. Just to be on the safe side. But glad to hear you got the posts cleaned one way or the other ;)
I take it we can mark this solved then? :)
Yep, this one is done.
Marking solved then :)