Move all one user's posts to another place. How?

[abrogard]

I have one forum wherein one user has posted about 100 topics that don't fit.
I would like to create a forum all for himself or anyone else doing the same thing and move all his posts to it.
How can I do that?
I couldn't even isolate his posts in the MCP. my searches on his name failed.
I don't think he's posted anything else anywhere else on the board so any commands that would be board wide would be okay though of course something restricted to this forum would be a better instrument for future use.

[abrogard]

Can we manipulate the tables with some third party software and have all still function well?

I am thinking of, for instance, searching for all a particular user's posts and then shifting them to some other forum or topic.

That kind of thing.

[thecoalman]

Tables in phpBB are interconnected meaning data in one table is related to another. Any manual updates to the database need to take this into account. It's strongly suggested you do not manually edit anything in the database unless you know exactly what you are doing.

I am thinking of, for instance, searching for all a particular user's posts and then shifting them to some other forum or topic.

Click the username on any post and on their profile page select administer user which will open the main page for their account in the ACP. Down the bottom under basic tools select move all posts. Be aware if the user has many posts this action can timeout. Makes sure to backup database beforehand.

If you want more options beyond that create a private empty forum to move them too. Then you can use the moderator tools to merge/move/delete selected topics/posts in bulk.

[abrogard]

Thank you for that. Good info, good advice. I don't understand the implications/ramification of the 'private empty forum' as yet though. I guess I'll catch up.

[Mick]

If you have tons of topics or posts from a user that you want to manipulate it just makes life far easier and less error prone if you put them all in a private forum then make your changes.

[warmweer]

If you're referring to the user agrohimzs, most of his posts are new topics without replies ... (about 1400 posts)
Just delete the user with option delete posts. It may time-out, but you should still have the option to delete the user (again with option delete posts).

I've just tried it on the copy of your board and had 2 time-outs (the PWS I used isn't performant) and could restart the deletion.

[abrogard]

If you have tons of topics or posts from a user that you want to manipulate it just makes life far easier and less error prone if you put them all in a private forum then make your changes.

Yep. Please excuse my ignorance but I don't know what a 'private forum' is right now. I guess when I get into the board and look around or do some googling I'll find out quick enough but that was my point.....

[abrogard]

If you're referring to the user agrohimzs, most of his posts are new topics without replies ... (about 1400 posts)
Just delete the user with option delete posts. It may time-out, but you should still have the option to delete the user (again with option delete posts).

I've just tried it on the copy of your board and had 2 time-outs (the PWS I used isn't performant) and could restart the deletion.

Hey, hi.... Yep, that's him. I figured I might let him post his fertilizer stuff somewhere. Did you see I made a forum called 'fertilizer' I think ? If these Russians keep wanting to post all their advertising material on my boards I don't see it hurts me to let them as long as its not obscene spam and all that sort of stuff. And it give me 'material' to work with. I need to work with my boards more and learn how to properly and well administer, eh?

So right now I'm trying to learn techniques for dealing with problems such as this. You know? Like this guy is nothing but how about if he had his own real value and had his posts all mixed in with many others of real value?

Is there any technical treatise anywhere on this interdependency of the database tables in a phpbb board? That would enable one to make a set of rules to guide a db management tool operating on them? I guess what we have is a relational database. Relations known and catered for we should be able to quickly manipulate it safely.

[warmweer]

Hey, hi.... Yep, that's him. I figured I might let him post his fertilizer stuff somewhere. Did you see I made a forum called 'fertilizer' I think ? If these Russians keep wanting to post all their advertising material on my boards I don't see it hurts me to let them as long as its not obscene spam and all that sort of stuff. And it give me 'material' to work with. I need to work with my boards more and learn how to properly and well administer, eh?

Check the IPs of that user (BTW it's not a human, no human would post 1000+ posts in such a short time)).
If they're mostly the same you could probably block them (but that may be only a temporary solution).
If they have the same user-agent you could block those. (or add to a group with severe limitations)

So right now I'm trying to learn techniques for dealing with problems such as this. You know? Like this guy is nothing but how about if he had his own real value and had his posts all mixed in with many others of real value?

Most of the links are https://agro-himiya.by/ so you can declare agro-himiya.by a forbidden "word"

Is there any technical treatise anywhere on this interdependency of the database tables in a phpbb board? That would enable one to make a set of rules to guide a db management tool operating on them? I guess what we have is a relational database. Relations known and catered for we should be able to quickly manipulate it safely.

https://www.erdcloud.com/d/23zvQbme2zHiLtYmf (but it's for phpBB 3.2)

Honestly I wouldn't advise trying to manipulate the data without fully understanding the relationships between the tables. Apart from that you shouldn't do that on a live database anyway. The other constraint would be : which language are you going to use. PHP? Or would you link/import it in another database system? I've done it with phpBB3.0 in Access but I'm fairly proficient in VB and in MS-SQL but know for sure I'm not capable of doing it with PHP (and pure SQL) within a reasonable time frame .

On a board as small as yours, I would just use native phpBB features (deleting posts/topics/users)

[Floyd]

Hey, hi.... Yep, that's him. I figured I might let him post his fertilizer stuff somewhere. Did you see I made a forum called 'fertilizer' I think ? If these Russians keep wanting to post all their advertising material on my boards I don't see it hurts me to let them as long as its not obscene spam and all that sort of stuff. And it give me 'material' to work with. I need to work with my boards more and learn how to properly and well administer, eh?

You can block spambots. Use the question/answer captcha and model your question after the one this site uses making it relevant to your own site.

[warmweer]

BTW your cookie_secure is set to false?
AFAIR it was set to true couple of hours ago.

[abrogard]

BTW your cookie_secure is set to false?
AFAIR it was set to true couple of hours ago.

Hmmm... I don't even know what that is. I know I"ve not consciously made any config changes anywhere this morning.

As regards your earlier post on the db: thankyou for the ERDCloud link and the db structure graphic. Marvellous. I've even joined up.

I wouldn't be doing any coding to manipulate the db. that's not what I mean. In the main simply remove posts and put them somewhere else perhaps is all. I'd use phpmyadmin I guess, something like that.

And look to automating it somehow, whatever is available. Get it in sql and run an sql script?

All prompted by my frustration at no apparent 'batch' or bulk way of dealing with all those posts. I got a response indicated there is a way looking at their profile page and administer user. I mean to look into that.

It is all very much dilettante stuff with me. You'd know from our PM's how retarded I now am. My db training goes back 35 years and I've been well outside of the industry this last 25 years. I might entertain thoughts of doing this or that but mostly it alway remains in my dreams...

I like that erd graphic though and the db structure I was able to download to spreadsheet. seems no real problems with doing mass deletions of posts to me but I haven't yet checked the foreign keys for cascades.

[Floyd]

All prompted by my frustration at no apparent 'batch' or bulk way of dealing with all those posts. I got a response indicated there is a way looking at their profile page and administer user. I mean to look into that.

Here are the steps I take with spammers.

From the ACP in the user's profile: Use the Quick tools to ban the email. This prevents them from reregistering using the same email address.

Delete user.

Select the option to remove user's posts.

Click Submit.

[warmweer]

I like that erd graphic though and the db structure I was able to download to spreadsheet. seems no real problems with doing mass deletions of posts to me but I haven't yet checked the foreign keys for cascades.

If you're thinking about removing entries in the database, e.g. posts ... bin that idea.
There are many posts that are a topic with nothing but 1 post ... so that topic would have to be deleted.
After removing posts, you'ld have to recalculate total postcount , postcount within topics, fix last post in a topic, including last post time and last poster etc...

As I mentioned (as did Floyd and probably others): use the native features and if you get timeouts, just reduce the number of posts to delete (e.g. forum per forum)

As to the cookie secure: ACP >> tab General >> Server configuration >> cookie settings.
Before doing anything : take a database backup

[abrogard]

Yep Thanks for that.