Cron job: Prune forums

If you get the kind of traffic like we do-- average 2,000 messages post per day-- you need to do a lot of pruning.

Here's a hack that will automatically run a script daily (or weekly) that will select forums to prune, choose how old the pruned threads must be, deletes the threads, then updates the thread and post counts (all configurable). Author assumes that you have access to your server's filesystem and can edit your crontab file, located in /etc

Steps:

1. Edit your crontab file (in /etc) and add one of these lines:

If you want to run it DAILY at 12:01am
01 00 * * * root /usr/local/bin/php /fullpath/to/yourboard/admin/cron_prune.php >dev/null

If you want to run it WEEKLY, every SUNDAY at 12:01am
01 00 * * 0 root /usr/local/bin/php /fullpath/to/yourboard/admin/cron_prune.php >dev/null

(replace /fullpath/to/yourboard/admin/ with the actual server path to your vB admin directory)

2. Put the attached file (cron_prune.php) in your board's admin directory.

3. Edit the cron_prune.php file and enter your own settings at the top of the file.

If you have any questions, post them here (I'll subscribe to this thread) or email me at jennifer@babynames.com

Let me know if it works for ya! It works for us!
Jenn

[jamoss]

Thanks, Ryan!

You can run the script manually from the browser to see if it's working for you, but note that you will not receive any output in the browser. When it's done, it will either just stop running with a blank screen or say "No Data".

Jennifer.

[ImportPassion]

just a note, foe some reason my global.php had this.

PHP Code:

if ($bbuserinfo[userid]==0 and $checkpwd) { 


instead of this

PHP Code:

if ($bbuserinfo[userid]==0 && $checkpwd) { 


I have 2.2.9. So if you have trouble finding that line, this may be why.

Derek

[ryancooper]

04-12-03 at 04:47 AM jamoss said this in Post #11
Thanks, Ryan!

You can run the script manually from the browser to see if it's working for you, but note that you will not receive any output in the browser. When it's done, it will either just stop running with a blank screen or say "No Data".

Jennifer.

Well it works but I get a database error:

Database error in vBulletin Control Panel 2.3.0:

Invalid SQL: DELETE FROM searchindex WHERE wordid IN (0) AND postid=
mysql error: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1

mysql error number: 1064

Date: Sunday 20th of April 2003 08:51:59 AM
Script: http://www.talkdisney.com/forums/for...cron_prune.php
Referer:

could this be because i emptied my searchindex to save space?

[ImportPassion]

any idea why I get this when trying to run this on command line

[root@srv1 forums]# php -q /home/virtual/site1/fst/var/www/html/forums/admin/cron_prune.php

Warning: main(./config.php) [http://www.php.net/function.main]: failed to create stream: No such file or directory in /home/virtual/site1/fst/var/www/html/forums/admin/global.php on line 96

yet if I go direct to the admin dir and run the script w/o the whole path but with just the file, it works no prob.

D

[jamoss]

look in global.php and see what it's trying to do on line 96.

[tpearl5]

Just what I needed! Thanks! I think there's a lot of people that are looking for something like this but didn't type in the right search terms to find it. Works great in combination with the newsgroup hack for deleting old threads that can take up extra space.