# Clean up old topics **URL:** \ **Category:** Product Support\ **Created:** [February 2, 2023, 5:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/clean-up-old-topics/253862 "2023-02-02T17:08:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 5
**Author:** ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2023, 8:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/clean-up-old-topics/253862/5 "2023-02-02T20:48:19Z")
One thing you might do going forward is turn on chat, which I’m guessing is most of what is happening, especially if you’re wanting to delete it. That way stuff gets pruned automatically (I think the default is 90 days, which is likely enough). And NONE of the stuff that’s old is important? And if some is, how are you going to keep what’s good? By category? It looks like `Topic.destroy` calls the `PostDestroyer`, so I think that destoying those topics, should do what you want. I’d recommend that you set up a test site to do some testing before you go doing this on your production server. I might be tempted to create a set of Discourse sites, though, perhaps one per graduating class, so you could just shut them down when it was time. You might also have a separate one for school-wide stuff and have them share an authentication server (either the school-wide discourse or, hopefully, whatever auth server your school/district uses). Oh, or maybe this is for high school students, but not a high school. So this reorg might not make sense. --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/clean-up-old-topics/253862)._