Deleting a forum - Will it Remove All Posts in that Forum?

[Heath]

I have 5million+ posts in my forum and it is killing my server. I want to completely remove a entire forum and subforum. Will that also delete all the posts?

If not. How can I quickly remove around 3million posts with out causing any issues with my vb?

[lane]

Originally Posted by Heath

I have 5million+ posts in my forum and it is killing my server. I want to completely remove a entire forum and subforum. Will that also delete all the posts?

If not. How can I quickly remove around 3million posts with out causing any issues with my vb?

I highly doubt the posts are killing your server, why dont you set it up to archive the old posts?

In regards to killing your server, how exactly are posts doing that?

[Heath]

Well, I know for a fact the amount of posts is what is killing the server considering the threads and posts part of my DB is 5.6 GB a piece. Which makes my DB over 11GB. So yes, it is most definitely the posts. Every time some one trys to view a post or forum it has to sort through 11GB of posts to find the right ones. VB people have already confirmed this is the case.

How do we set it up to archive posts with out storing a mass amount of data?

actually the logic of your analysis is false... the system does not "search" for post x... the index of your forum is clear and the system knows where the post is located, it does not have to browse all of the posts to seek them.

also, 5 millions posts is not that big... i suppose your server needs optimization, but that's not major... i had to reconstruct the biggest vBulletin forums on the market and i can tell you that it's more easy than thought.. just need to be done the right way.

instead of deleting, you may have to evaluate an expert optimization...

[Heath]

How about some tips then if it is as easy as you make it sound?

it's easy for someone who knows what he do... i usually know... for someone ot aware of all the little webmastering tricks, it's a real mess to start with.

but basically, you need to have your tables optimized, datastore rebuilt, split your forums in sub-forums when possible/needed, you also need to switch to FULLTEXT search when it's not, so your database is not filled with millions of indexes... lowering some datelines and setting some features to lower priority is also needed to make your searches faster...