Hello, I am looking for a way to clean up a category. There are searches posted that are only valid for a certain period of time. Currently I close it after 2 months after the last answer. Is there an automatic way to delete them after x days after closing? I have found the following plugin, but it should not only delete topics that have not been replied to.

Have you explored Topic timer? In the topic wrench. [This is a screenshot of a webpage showing a dropdown menu with the option to select a topic for a timer. (Captioned by AI)]

but then i would have to do this manually for each post? I can’t find a setting to automate this. There are currently over 7k entries in the category.

You can also add your vote to Category-level auto-delete topics the same as auto-close feature

Tagging on here as it seems related. I just found two topic in the Deleted Topics logs which were “Deleted by Automatic Timer” and should not have been deleted. Both of these topics were created by me, splitting comments from a existing topics to a create the new topic which were auto-deleted ~12(?) days later. My best guess is the Delete Topic Timer was inadvertently set when I created these posts. There is no Delete Topic Timer available to me in the moderator tools. I don’t see any Auto Delete Topic option as shown by @Heliosurge’s screencap above. The only timer I can control is to Close Comments. So I think I understand why this happened, but I don’t know how to avoid it the next time. Is this a bug that can be fixed, or am I missing something? TIA!

If you click on the wrench for your topic you will see Topic Timer. Click on that. There is a dropdown menu to choose things like auto close, auto delete and more. There is a topic timer option in Category settings but only see it for auto close.

I’ve created a small script that deletes posts via API; if anyone else would like to use it, it can be found here: Making sure you're not a bot!

[image] Tealk: Is there an automatic way to delete them after x days after closing Is that what the script you shared is doing? To me it seems it would delete closed topics that were created x days ago. So a topic which is closed quite a while after it was created because there were new replies in a longer timespan might get deleted almost immediately.

That is correct, I am currently still working on building in a few more parameters. I have very many old posts, which is why I’ve cleaned things up with this method for now. Unfortunately, I cannot find any way via the API to find out the date when the post was closed. The current workaround would be to use last_post and date it accordingly.

Automatic deletion of old and closed topics?

Product Support

Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency) October 13, 2024, 9:46am 4

You might be able to have an Automation script. If a script does not currently exist. If you have the skills you can create an automation script. Or consider sponsoring one in Marketplace.

Topic		Replies	Views
Delete topics automatically after N days inside a category Product Support	2	197	March 8, 2025
Auto-delete topics in a category after X days? Product Support experienced	2	233	August 28, 2024
Is there a way to auto-delete a post? Product Support	10	2511	February 10, 2019
Category-level auto-delete topics the same as auto-close feature Feature topic-timers	16	3285	May 27, 2026
Default topic timer to auto-delete replies! Feature topic-timers	11	1085	March 29, 2024

Automatic deletion of old and closed topics?

Related topics