How to find a rogue banner topic?

Support
1

New users are seeing an unintended banner at the top of all pages until they dismiss it. I’m guessing someone inadvertently created a banner topic. How can I track down which topic was inadvertently pinned? Normally this would be easy- just search for the banner text and find the corresponding topic- but in this case, the text is auto-generated and occurs in hundreds of topics.

If I try to pin another topic, it tells me there is currently a banner topic. But where?

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I’ve searched admin/settings for banner, pin, etc.

This query in Data Explorer shows only the ‘Welcome to Discourse’ topic.

select * from topics where pinned_globally = TRUE

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Visit the site in anonymous / incognito mode and you’ll see the banner. Then search for the text in the banner, I guess.

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I’ve done that- the text in the banner is “This topic does not yet have a summary”. The problem is that we have hundreds of topics with that text, and I need to find the pinned one so I can unpin it and make the banner go away. (Assuming that’s even what is causing the banner.)

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4

Well your query is wrong, because you are querying global pins not banner.

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5

Not as efficient but less techy might be to take note of the Topic ID number from the URL while incognito and use it after logging in.

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If you clear your cookies the banner will come back, and there is an edit link on the banner itself. You’ll need to be logged in as staff though.

Alternately create a new user, grant them moderator, and log in as that user. The banner will appear for them with the edit link.

I think the problem is that you’ve dismissed the banner, which makes it harder to find.

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I must not be using the right terminology- here’s a picture. I impersonate a new user so I can see the “banner”. It only has text, no link- I can’t click on it to find the source or topic id.

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The reason I’m calling it a banner is:

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Correct you must come in as staff to see the edit link. A regular user doesn’t have permission to change a banner.

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If I clear cookies and come in as myself (admin), I get the “Do you want live notifications” banner, not the rogue banner.

I don’t see a way to query for banner- any idea which table I should be looking at?

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10

Try creating a new account, granting it moderator or admin, and logging in as that account. I guess clearing the banner must be stored in a more persistent per account location.

You should see the “edit this banner” text on the banner topic, like so

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Clicking that link will take you to the topic that has been bannered.

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Yes, that worked. Problem solved. Thanks!

I guess so.

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12

Sorry about the difficulty, we don’t usually see rogue bannered topics :wink:

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I understand, this was unusual. We had a bannered topic with one post, which was working fine. Then we commissioned a plugin to auto-insert a wiki post as the first post of each topic, in hundreds of topics. So the newly-inserted wiki became the banner.

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