# \[Paid\] Prune Spam users
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132
**Category:** Marketplace
**Created:** [May 22, 2017, 10:28am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132 "2017-05-22T10:28:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@treb0r](https://meta.discourse.org/u/treb0r)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2017, 10:28am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/1 "2017-05-22T10:28:42Z")
What would you like done?
Remove spam users from discourse. Specifically, remove users if not logged in for a year and never posted.
When do you need it done?
ASAP
What is your budget, in $ USD that you can offer for this task?
Please give me a quote!
---
### Author:  [@TrumpPlaysRBX](https://meta.discourse.org/u/TrumpPlaysRBX)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2017, 10:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/2 "2017-05-22T10:51:08Z")
Removing spam users would be good.
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### Author:  [@MakaryGo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/MakaryGo)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2017, 11:09am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/3 "2017-05-22T11:09:46Z")
`User.joins(:user_stat).where("user_stats.post_count = 0 AND previous_visit_at <= '2016-05-22'::timestamp").destroy_all`
Should do the trick đ Of course make sure to make a backup first đ
Edit:
Sorry, forgot usage tips đ Of course you have to log into your server, go into the discourse directory [probably /var/discourse], enter your Docker container [probably `./launcher enter app`] and then enter rails console by typing `rails c` . These are defaults on docker based installations đ
@treb0r
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### Author:  [@treb0r](https://meta.discourse.org/u/treb0r)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2017, 11:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/4 "2017-05-22T11:21:04Z")
Hey @MakaryGo, thanks dude, thatâs kind of you.
I will give it a go.
Cheers đ
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2017, 10:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/6 "2017-05-22T22:25:34Z")
Donât share email addresses in public, go ahead and PM each other as needed!
One caution: destroying users can be slow, so be sure you batch this somehow in case a giant mass delete times out or anything weird.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2017, 10:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/7 "2017-05-22T22:31:07Z")
There are probably fewer than 1000 users with zero posts who havenât logged in in the past year, so this should be reasonably safe.
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### Author:  [@treb0r](https://meta.discourse.org/u/treb0r)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2017, 10:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/8 "2017-05-22T22:59:39Z")
The users were originally imported into Discourse from BBpress, and thatâs where the spam users came from.
I think thereâs probably about 5000 or so.
What is the syntax to get a count of users before I run the destroy?
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2017, 11:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/9 "2017-05-22T23:01:52Z")
put a `.count` at the end of the line above where `.destroy_all` is.
I think you can add `limit 1000` in the `where` clause to limit the query.
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### Author:  [@treb0r](https://meta.discourse.org/u/treb0r)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2017, 11:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/10 "2017-05-22T23:03:14Z")
Thanks. Thatâs great.
Iâll give it a go..
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2017, 11:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/11 "2017-05-22T23:05:01Z")
Not quite. The limit thing works like this:
```plaintext
User.joins(:user_stat).where("user_stats.post_count = 0 AND previous_visit_at <= '2016-05-22'::timestamp").limit(1000)
```
You can add `.destroy_all` at the end of it.
---
### Author:  [@treb0r](https://meta.discourse.org/u/treb0r)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:09am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/12 "2017-06-05T09:09:49Z")
Just getting around to trying this.
Does anyone have any guidance on the best way to maintain a staged copy of a production discourse forum?
Iâm worried about running these kind of queries on production, even if I do have a fresh backup.
I was thinking about setting up an LXD container on my local machine and installing docker discourse there. Whatâs the best way of handling this?
---
### Author:  [@JagWaugh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JagWaugh)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:33am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/13 "2017-06-05T09:33:55Z")
> [@treb0r](#):
>
> Does anyone have any guidance on the best way to maintain a staged copy of a production discourse forum?
Hereâs how I do it:
> [@Build a sandbox to test changes before making them live](https://meta.discourse.org/t/howto-build-yourself-a-sandbox/58298):
>
> Regardless of if youâre a moderator or an admin, you will no doubt at some time think about making some change to your live site and wonder if this will bring shame on you, and/or cause yourself an enormous amount of work to put right again. There is an easy solution to this: build yourself a sandbox! You can restore a backup of your live site to the sandbox and this will give you a representative post and user base, then you can play Dangerous Dan all you want. (If it isnât your site, then taâŚ
Itâs enough to import a backup just once.
Then you can try anything out in your sandbox, including checking that the latest OS patches and Discourse updates are ok. Our live site is on AWS, but if you run your sandbox on a different provider than your live site then youâll be open to differences in OS/Droplet changes.
I donât run any mail on the sandbox, so regardless of what I mess up it wonât start sending stuff to the users.
---
### Author:  [@treb0r](https://meta.discourse.org/u/treb0r)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:40am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/14 "2017-06-05T09:40:44Z")
Thatâs great, thanks for the reply.
One question - what happens to the urls in this situation?
If I import a backup from [mydiscourse.com](http://mydiscourse.com) into mydiscourse.dev do I need to manually change the address in the admin?
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### Author:  [@JagWaugh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JagWaugh)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:53am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/15 "2017-06-05T09:53:57Z")
It depends. If you leave .com in .css, for example, then the sandbox will keep taking you to the live site.
iirc I just went through the settings and changed any that seemed might cause a problem, but to be absolutely safe you might want to change all of them.
Also, if youâre using S3 for storage, do something about that so that you are sure that youâre not influencing the live site.
Links to other posts inside the sandbox resolve to the corresponding item in the sandbox, but I think this might be dependent what you do with hostname in app.yml (if you copy your app.yml over from your live site then be veewy, veewy cawefuwâŚ)
---
### Author:  [@treb0r](https://meta.discourse.org/u/treb0r)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 10:06am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/16 "2017-06-05T10:06:59Z")
Thanks. Iâll be careful đ
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 12:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/17 "2017-06-05T12:51:56Z")
You could also change your DNS where youâre browsing from, so youâd not keep getting pushed to the live site.
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### Author:  [@treb0r](https://meta.discourse.org/u/treb0r)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2017, 8:40am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/18 "2017-06-06T08:40:40Z")
> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> You could also change your DNS where youâre browsing from, so youâd not keep getting pushed to the live site.
Great idea. Thanks. /etc/hosts did the trick.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 8:40am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/paid-prune-spam-users/63132/19 "2017-07-06T08:40:53Z")
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