In a discussion titled ‘Why is it not possible to permanently delete topics or posts?’, blueblue expresses frustration over Discourse’s lack of a permanent delete feature, arguing that admins should be able to fully remove test posts, spam, or violating content from the database—not just soft-delete them. blueblue further argues that entire categories with obsolete topics should be fully deletable to avoid clutter, even if space is minimal. Canapin references a prior meta discussion on the topic. JimPas clarifies that while soft-deletion is default, admins can adjust settings like delete all posts max (default 15) and purge deleted uploads grace period days (default 180) to manage bulk deletions and file cleanup. Finally, sam announces the addition of the can_permanently_delete setting, which now allows admins to hard-delete posts and revisions directly from the UI, with more details available on meta.discourse.org.
I am really liking Discourse, it works really well but one thing I am struggling with is not being able to delete topics and posts permanently, like from the DB/server, not just hiding them. I don’t see why this isn’t already built in? - I want to be able to permanently delete because I don’t see why I should keep around test posts, spam or posts which need to be removed because they break code of conduct or are of low quality/copyrighted.
I am used to using forums which allow you to actually delete stuff completely, is this possible or am I missing something? I think soft deleting is a good idea but having the choice to delete from the DB as well is useful.
From reading most of the other topics regarding this problem of not having such a feature to delete something forever, I disagree and I feel it should be a core feature. A great example of why this feature would be useful is what if I had a category that was going to be completely closed because either the community has changed direction or that category was just not needed any more, why would I want to keep lots of topics and “hide” them? - Even if its MBs of disk space, admins should be able to delete these completely.
There is a setting which limits how many posts can be deleted at one time with the Delete All Posts button. The default is 15 posts. It’s here in your Dashboard: /admin/site_settings/category/users. Scroll down to delete all posts max and change that. If users have a lot of posts in a topic, it could take a while to get rid of them all if it’s set to a low number.
If a user has uploaded a file and it is deleted, it’s not permanently deleted until after a grace period has expired. (Think Windows Recycle Bin.) The default number is 180 days. This can be adjusted here: admin/site_settings/category/files and scrolling down to purge deleted uploads grace period days.
