Say you have lots of very old posts that would qualify for being auto closed once you turn that setting on for a category. When you turn on the setting, lets say, to auto close posts after 5 years of no activity, when do all those posts get auto closed? As soon as you click save? Or is there some automatic cleanup that happens in the background. Is that likely to cause performance issues? And second question, do posts that were auto closed open back up if you change the time on the category? I’m assuming not. I’m also assuming there is no easy way through the interface to re-open in bulk. Is that correct?

[image] one1: Say you have lots of very old posts that would qualify for being auto closed once you turn that setting on for a category. When you turn on the setting, lets say, to auto close posts after 5 years of no activity, when do all those posts get auto closed? As soon as you click save? Or is there some automatic cleanup that happens in the background. Is that likely to cause performance issues? By default, the auto-close setting on a category only applies to newly created topics. Existing topics are not auto-closed as soon as you save the setting. They will remain open unless you explicitly apply the auto-close to them. There is a dedicated script (rake topics:apply_autoclose) that can be run via the server console to apply the auto-close timer to existing topics. This script silently closes qualifying topics (those old enough, based on your setting), minimizing notifications. Applying the setting to all old topics at once using the script is a background operation. If you have a very large community and many old topics, it may take some time, but it runs server-side. Performance impact varies depending on hosting and topic count, but the rake task is designed for bulk actions and should not severely affect healthy, well-provisioned Discourse sites. Discussion on the same is here: [image] Apply auto-close to existing topics Self-Hosting bookmark This documentation provides instructions on how to apply the auto-close feature to existing topics using a specific script. When you configure categories in Discourse to auto-close topics, this setting applies only to new topics. However, you can apply this setting to existing topics as well through a simple script. Topics closed using this script are closed silently to avoid unnecessary notifications. Accessing your site To begin, connect to your server via SSH and enter the Doc… [image] one1: And second question, do posts that were auto closed open back up if you change the time on the category? I’m assuming not. I’m also assuming there is no easy way through the interface to re-open in bulk. Is that correct? Changing the auto-close time does NOT reopen topics that were already closed (i.e., closure is not reversed). There is no built-in user interface option to bulk re-open closed topics. However, you can use a script or a Rails console command to reopen topics in bulk. Topic.where(closed: true).where("created_at < 'your_date'").find_each do |topic| topic.update_status('closed', false, Discourse.system_user) end

What exactly happens when you turn on auto closing?

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one1 September 16, 2025, 12:53pm 3

Thank you so much. I swear I searched, but I didn’t see that post you quoted.

Topic		Replies	Views
Topics moved into auto-close-able categories should autoclose Bug	3	1433	May 31, 2017
Auto close only if last post is this old Product Support topic-timers	2	312	February 10, 2024
Autoclose topic if set to 1 minute doesn't work until 2 minutes Bug	3	743	April 6, 2022
Change default auto-close on all categories Product Support	1	789	April 27, 2019
Auto-delete or close posts/topics - basic housekeeping Product Support	2	686	May 14, 2020

What exactly happens when you turn on auto closing?

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