We have some hidden forums that we’d like to delete to clean up our db, but are unable to do so from the WP Admin interface due to query timeout issues.

Wondering if anyone has worked out any sql queries to do this via phpmyadmin?

[@casiepa Moderator 8 years, 10 months ago]

Do you have that many topics/replies in those forums ?
I suppose you tried to click on ‘Trash’ under a forum in the ‘All Forums’ list ?

Pascal.

[@bigskyry59715 Participant 8 years, 10 months ago]

@casiepa They’re not big forums – up to a few hundred topics and up to several hundred replies only. We have about 120k topics and 800k replies in our forum db overall.

We’re on an enterprise class server at WPEngine, so it doesn’t seem like we should be running into problems.

Yes, we’re trying to hit the “Trash” link from the All Forums list.

[@casiepa Moderator 8 years, 10 months ago]

The SQL I have is to wipe out ALL data from bbPress, so that’s not what you want.

Workaround proposal:
If you go on your dashboard > Replies > All Replies (so /wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=reply), and then select the forum in the dropdown box that says ‘in all forums’ and click filter.
In the screen options, put the ‘number of items’ to e.g. 100.
Delete some screens in this way…

Does that work ?

Then the same with the topics, empty the trash and try to delete the forum.

Pascal.

[@bigskyry59715 Participant 8 years, 10 months ago]

Yes, this sort of hack would certainly work.

These forums aren’t *that* big. Why is this a problem? Is it a problem with bbPress?

[@casiepa Moderator 8 years, 10 months ago]

Nope, first time I hear somebody that cannot delete a forum. Just trying to find a workaround…
I would say: delete some hundreds like this, then try to delete the forum again.

In most of the cases it’s another plugin that is doing strange things (like checking everything that is getting deleted, a security plugin that is doing a lot of checks per deletion, …)
Pascal.