lavalamp213 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 28, 2018 3:26 pm
I just really goofed and deleted a topic, and yes I checked the box to delete permanently.
Is there any way I can undo this and get the topic back?
Undoing it with the phpBB core features is impossible due to the "delete permanently" which is there just to prevent that.
However, you mention "a" topic as in "1" topic.
If you have a backup with that complete topic, it shouldn't be all that difficult to import the necessary records into the relevant tables.
However!!!, and this is a disclaimer : only try this if you know how to select and extract records using phpMyAdmin (or whichever one you use) and know how to import that data into the correct tables. (and can work with backups)
And ALWAYS test this on a parallel installation (localhost) so that you can test the result before applying it online.
The idea is that you have only deleted a topic (= 1 record in the topic-table) and some posts (in the posts_table), so all you have to do is to find the topic record and the post records and reimport them into your forum. After that is done, a simple recalculation of forum stats should set everything back to the correct state.
The sooner this is done, the easier, e.g. a user who made one of those deleted posts (or topic) may have been deleted implying that the posts and topic would remain without a legitimate author (user).
If the number of deleted posts is small (say a max of 10), then I would suggest, just copying those posts by typing them yourself in a new topic in a temporarily hidden forum, edit the post authors (built in phpBB functionality) and edit the post_time (either in phpMyadmin or by using the changetime extension (by javiexin). In this way you don't really risk anything.
Again (and I stress this very strongly) : try this on a
copy of your live forum before doing this on your live forum !!!
Next time: always delete in 2 steps: first step = soft delete - second step = after reviewing only: permadelete