Hey guys! I’m just wondering if there’s a tool / plug-in that can help me do a sort of “clean-up” for our forum? The idea is to clear out any unnecessary / outdated topics so that users don’t find themselves going back to it. I was also thinking maybe some themes that can give a cleaner look can help as well? Or any plug-in that can help reduce clutter in order to focus on quality discussions or support processes. Any help would be much appreciated!
AI-generated summary
The discussion revolves around cleaning up and organizing a forum to improve support processes. Gregory_Reyes initially asked for a tool or plugin to help clear out unnecessary and outdated topics to prevent users from reviving old discussions. robmc suggested that instead of deleting old topics, it’s more beneficial to link and merge related topics to create better reference content. They also recommended using the “Auto-close topic hours” feature in Category Settings and provided links to resources on mass-closing and using topic timers to auto-close or auto-delete specific topics.
Gregory_Reyes clarified that their main objective is to organize the forum’s look and function to improve support processes. robmc suggested using topic timers to auto-close or auto-delete specific topics. The discussion was later revived by WorldIsMine, who shared a similar concern about needing to purge old private messages (PMs) containing sensitive data in case of a security breach.
Happy to try to help, but can you define what you mean by ‘clean-up’ in this case?
One of the strengths of a forum is that relevant content can be found over time and does not have to be recent - the problem, for example of social networks like twitter.
The content will be available for users to search and discover, so it is more helpful to do the work to link & merge related topics as they arise to create better reference content rather than ‘clean up’ afterwards, but it will depend on your community and what content is being created.
One thing you could consider is in Category Settings, you can set Auto-close topic hours to close automatically after a certain time, so new arrivals can read the material and reference it but not revive the topic. Have you tried this?
If you want to select which topics are “unnecessary / outdated” you can select them and close them all - there is more information on that here:
Thanks for this! The issue is really more of old topics being revived so we’re trying to lessen this by maybe deleting old topics, hence the “cleanup”. But maybe cleanup is the wrong term. Our main objective is to organize the whole forum in terms of look and function so that support processes are better.
I trust the link answers some of those questions, and maybe adding the auto-close to the category will help to reduce the work going forward
If you have active mods, then you can also use Topic Timers to auto-close, or auto-delete, specific topics if they are unlikely to add to the reference material on the site
This thread is about creating new posts, but it will point you to the place to also select auto-delete if you want
Reviving this as I had a similar question. In my community, virtually everyone deals with sensitive data via PMs. Lots of images, pdfs, documents, etc. The old PMs aren’t needed anymore and I would love the ability to purge old PMs en masse, in case we ever get breached it would get really messy.