So our instance is used by a small college and there is a reasonable request to mark all topics as archived on a yearly basis. Something like all topic created before July 30th will be archived on September 1, Now I can just bodge this into the plugin that I use to manage (import, disable, rename, etc) users and call it good. But I am thinking that I am not the only one with this need. If there are a couple people that could also use this I will do it a separate plugin. Basically it has 3 config options Created date Archive date Activated Any interest?

Maybe a good idea was to scope to a specific category, like archive all topics on the category Christmas Party on January.

How about a reversible scope. (All categories in this) or (All categories NOT in this list) In my case there might be one or two categories to preserve as un archived. I can where there would be a case where you only wanted to effect a small set of categories.

Yes very much so! @neil wrote code to split categories into different Discourse instances. We are very interested in the archiving concept being carried forward to move old content out of the site as it ages. Can you elaborate on what you had in mind with Archived?

Clarification: I do not mean archived as taken offline. I an using the term from discourse interface. Automating the year (or some time increment) closing (archiving) of all topics. This is probably not what you are after. Basically automate archiving topic on a calendar time basis. Right now you can on a category basis archive topics after some period of time. In my case there is a yearly window where all the topics from before a point in time should be automatically archived.

It is related, remember that archiving is putting one foot in the grave for that topic. You are on the road.

Interesting way of looking at it. A bit more that what I am building but I can see a link up. So are there any current thoughts on transport protocols or '‘physical’ archive formats to write this stuff out to. I would imagine two scenarios. The first being the topics being sent over to a second live but separate instance of discourse (maybe read only?) The second would be some slice of a current archive formate with the Topics, uploads and just the users that are in the topics. This latter would be enough to import into an other site. All of that said I will keep working on the minimal version I am targeting for automatic bulk archiving. I should have something in the next month or so.

Possibly related: [image] Re-purposing a Discourse installation for a yearly event Support It’s time to update this topic! I just finished the process of archiving all topics. I went with this suggestion: Of course, the devil lies in the details, so here are all the details, for anyone interested. Note that I’m not claiming this is the perfect way to do it (I know it’s not), I just want to document this as a starting point for others. Prepare for a wild ride wink Locking out all users The first step is to prevent all those pesky users from getting in again. I did this by configu…

I’m interested in something to archive old topics in my forum.

Ok there seems to be interest. I should have something to show in the next month. Basically I am going to scratch my own itch and then see what other people think.

Anyone interested in a mass automatic archiving plugin?

Development

codinghorror (Jeff Atwood) July 21, 2016, 1:57am 8

Yeah both scenarios are well worth exploring IMO but we have yet to get there!

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Anyone interested in a mass automatic archiving plugin?

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