[andrew459]

It looks like my bb_posts table is growing out of control in size. As I was browsing I noticed most of the posts in it are spam/bozo/deleted posts that do not actually even show up on the forum. It looks like bbpress is really good at moderating spam and blocking bozo posts, but how do I delete all those posts from my bb_posts table?

[johnhiler]

There’s no official support for this… but someone wrote a script a while ago to unofficially pull this off for 1.0:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/permanently-deleting-topocs-and-posts

I haven’t tested it though and it hasn’t been packaged as a plugin. If you try it out, definitely backup your database first – and test carefully!

[andrew459]

Thanks for help. I’m using bbpress 0.9.0.2 any idea if this script works with that? I guess I can always do a backup and try it anyways.

[johnhiler]

I think the script is one of those rare ones that works only with 1.0.

There’s no official support for permanent deletion of posts, but it’s a fairly often requested feature:

http://www.google.com/search?q=permanently+delete+post+site%3Abbpress.org

The only clean solution for now is to do it through phpMyAdmin?

[grassrootspa]

Just curious, why aren’t deleted posts permanently removed from the database?

Does WordPress permanently remove posts one deletes from the database?

[johnhiler]

@grassrootspa – I’m not sure why they did it that way… I guess so that you could restore the post if you wanted. WordPress doesn’t have a comments trash – if you delete a comment, the comment is gone. I think blog posts work the same way too.

So I guess the two systems work somewhat differently? That’s not the only difference either – WordPress also has a “moderated comments” layer in addition to the Akismet Spam layer, but bbPress only has the Akismet Spam layer. Dunno why bbPress doesn’t have a moderated layer either… maybe because bbPress doesn’t (yet) easily enable anonymous comments, so spam isn’t as huge a problem as it is in WordPress.

[_ck_]

I suspect the akismet plugin will eventually have a permanently delete feature like it does for WordPress.

If you have that much spam on your forums you have a bigger problem in that so many spammers are able to register so easily.

I can probably put a real delete button into Mass Edit

[grassrootspa]

@_ck_: That would be awesome!

@johnhiler: Thanks for your insights. Before this thread I was not sure if I my theme’s moderation system was simply not working right…looks like it is! My only major beef with bbPress is moderation interface.

1) Don’t like that you can’t permanently delete a post. (Let’s say there is a duplicate…it is pointless for the duplicate to remain in the system, want it deleted completely so I don’t confuse myself when I see it on the “Recently Moderated Items” of the dashboard!)

2) Anyone else have problems where bbPress flags a new poster (maybe they use naughty stuff in their name or profile descriptions) and makes them a bozo but you unfortunately don’t notice that bbPress flagged them for a couple days? Wish there was a better notification system for this (no one wants to lose potential users who are frustrated by their material not showing up)

[johnhiler]

The Bozo feature has a lot of problems and bugs, as far as I can tell…

I completely deactivated it, after having a few users affected in just the way you described!

[grassrootspa]

OMG, it must be frustrating to be mistaken as a BOZO.

[johnhiler]

Yah, you can see some of the emotional responses in past threads:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/fix-or-remove-bozo-function-before-it-kills-bbpress

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/key-master-posts-not-showing-up

It happened to one of my top contributors, and she almost quit before I finally figured out what was going on! Thankfully it’s just a plugin, so you can turn it off. (It’s a little scary, but more and more stuff like this is ending up in core – so bugs like this will be a lot harder to resolve, imo!)