This plugin keeps bbPress forums from growing without limit. Once a day it permanently deletes topics and replies older than a retention period you set, together with any documents or images uploaded to them. Conversations that are still active are left alone, and you can exempt whole forums, such as a policy library or a noticeboard, that should keep everything.
Set up Forum tidy
Activate the plugin under Plugins. It needs bbPress; without it the settings screen says there is nothing to tidy. Then go to Tools, Forum tidy. Only administrators can see it. There are three settings:
Retention period
Topics and replies older than this many days are deleted. The starting value is 30. Set it to 0 to switch the tidy off altogether while keeping the plugin active.
Recent activity
A topic that has had a reply within this many days is kept, however old the topic itself is, so a long-running conversation survives as long as people are still posting in it. The starting value is 5. Set it to 0 to delete old topics whatever their replies.
Exempt forums
Tick any forum whose content should never be deleted. Ticking a forum covers all of its sub-forums, which are shown greyed out beneath it. The list is empty on a site with no forums yet.
Select Save settings. Sites that used to set the retention period in the site’s configuration file see a note that the old setting is no longer used and can be removed; the number on this screen is the one that counts.
What gets deleted and when
The tidy runs once a day in the background. It deletes:
- topics past the retention period with no reply in the recent activity window, together with all their replies and every file uploaded to them;
- stray replies past the retention period whose topic has already gone.
Nothing in an exempt forum is ever touched, whatever its age. Deletion is permanent: items do not go to the bin, and the uploaded files are removed from the Media Library. Each run handles a batch at a time and queues another run a few minutes later while more remain, so a large backlog is cleared over the first day or so without slowing the site.
Check where things stand
Under the settings, the Where things stand table shows the current retention period and activity window, which forums are exempt, when the next run is due, what the last run deleted and when, and how many topics and stray replies are waiting to be deleted. Use it to sanity-check a new retention period before the first run: if the waiting count is far higher than you expected, lengthen the period or exempt a forum before the run happens.
Run the tidy now
The Run the tidy now button at the foot of the screen runs one batch immediately, after asking you to confirm. The notice afterwards says how many topics and replies were deleted and whether more remain for the scheduled runs. The button does nothing while the tidy is switched off or while a scheduled run is already in progress.
Related
- Available plugins: every Govintra plugin.
- (Govintra) Forum upload titles: labels forum uploads in the Media Library so they are easy to find.
- Forum template: the forum pages themselves.