Mass remove external links

[Xtrigit]

Is there a way I could mass delete external hyperlinks from posts?

Thanks

[Danielgsc]

Anybody? I'm interesting too. Mass delete or delete the links from a subforum...

[gobears20]

Anybody know of a way to do this?

[kh99]

I think you'd have to write php to do that. Someone more clever than I am might figure out how to do it with an sql statement, but I couldn't.

If you wanted to make certain forums so that urls couldn't be displayed, you might be able to do that by changing how the [url] bbcode is processed, and that owuld hide the existing ones as well as future ones. But that requires some programming as well.

[Dave]

I think you'd have to write php to do that. Someone more clever than I am might figure out how to do it with an sql statement, but I couldn't.

If you wanted to make certain forums so that urls couldn't be displayed, you might be able to do that by changing how the [url] bbcode is processed, and that owuld hide the existing ones as well as future ones. But that requires some programming as well.

It may be possible in a complicated SQL query which makes use of a regex, but even that exceeds my skills. I indeed think it's easier to do this in a PHP script which just iterates through all posts which contains the URL tag or links, then check on the domain and ignore whitelisted ones and finally remove the links.

[gobears20]

Yeah apparently I have some bad links in posts but I have so many there is no way to track all posts down. I would probably either need to remove the links or rename the links to something else.

[ozzy47]

Yeah it is not something that can easily be done. If you really want this, you should hire someone. But make sure you do a full backup before anyone starts working on this. :)

[gobears20]

I hear that ozzy47, don't want to crash and burn like that :)

Do you know of anybody that does work like that company or a well known person?

[ozzy47]

Best bet would be to post in the paid request forum, https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=30

Make sure you read the sticky threads in there before hiring anyone. :)

[gobears20]

Thanks:)

Hire at your own risk ;)

Here is what happen to me. I have a forum with over 4 million posts and AdSense says that some of my links are going to inappropriate sites. I have three days to get it corrected. Well I have no idea what links are good and what are bad because I have links to all kinds of sites from my posters. So I am stuck with either removing the adsense ads or creating a query that will either rename any links or delete the links. Not really the way to start off your morning seeing that at 6am this morning :) Its hard to watch every single posts on my site and to where its linking to.

[ozzy47]

Is this because they are live links?

[gobears20]

Yeah it started out the images so I turned that off but then they came back and found links that were going to bad sites.

[ozzy47]

Ok first do a complete backup of the site.

Then go to ACP--> Settings --> Options --> BB Code Settings --> Enabled Built-in BB Codes set the Allow Link BBCode to no.

Then go to ACP --> Maintenance --> General Update Tools and run the Rebuild Post Cache

Now any links such as https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=254263 should show up like this, [url]https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=254263[/url]

Hopefully that will satisfy adsense, as you no longer have live links to sites. :)

[gobears20]

Thanks for that info! If I do something like that and decide to turn it back on after that will the links from when people start posting links show up? I don't mind if the links show up after all of this its the back dated ones I want to show up without the link like you have above..

What I am thinking about doing is creating the backup site and using it as a test site to see what everything actually looks like :)

[ozzy47]

If they post links after you do as I suggested, then turn it back on, sure it will show as a live link. As far as the old links, I am not totally sure, it is something that is not tested to any extent.

[gobears20]

Thanks:)

I am actually surprised I don't see a mod for this because I can't be the only site that adsense is coming at about this. I hope this doesn't happen to anybody.

[ozzy47]

I might have another solution. First do a full backup.

Then in phpmyadmin, run the following two queries:

UPDATE post SET pagetext = REPLACE(pagetext, 'https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=254263

This way the older links can not be made live again. :)

[gobears20]

Thanks, I may end up doing that. :)

Some things I am noticing is that if you enter www or http it will automatically show as a link on my site. It’s almost like I would have to look for anything like http or www and replace. It would be kind of like breaking the links which in my case would not be a bad thing :). Some other things I have thought about was redirecting all links to a specific Website. I saw somebody post something about that.

[ozzy47]

Yeah not sure about the other ways, but I think the way I described is going to be the simplest to do.

[gobears20]

Thanks so much for your input! :)

[ozzy47]

Not a problem, hopefully it will satisfy google. :)

[kh99]

Some things I am noticing is that if you enter www or http it will automatically show as a link on my site.

In that case I believe a ... gets inserted automatically.

[ozzy47]

Correct, as the link bbcode does that. :)