Prune Guide

WARNING - Use this function with care !


What is pruning?
This is a process of "cleaning up" a forum of posts that are no longer posted in and are considered no longer relevant or wanted. Not only do regular posts get deleted/pruned, but stickied posts will also. Announcement do not get deleted/pruned.

Are you missing posts or topics on your forum that used to be there? Do you know about auto prune?
Everytime you make a section on your forum there is an option to prune it. The default number of days is 7. If you prune the forum, that means if a topic has not been posted in for 7 days, it will be pruned (deleted). You can change the number of days you would like. Make sure when you want it auto pruned it is not just set up on your Configuration, but that it is also enabled for the section you want pruned.

Do post counts get lowered when the Prune feature deletes posts?
No it does not make your posts count go down. But, when you manually delete your posts from the index page, the post count does go down. That is the beauty about have the Auto-Prune do it; your post counts stay the same.

How can I set Auto-Prune?
**Auto-Prune is can be useful for big forums that may get very cluttered up with topics.
**Auto-Prune means that once turned on it will search you forum everyday for posts for example 7 days old and delete them.
Follow these steps to turn Auto-Prune on:
1. Admin Control Panel
2. Forum Admin
3. Management
4. Edit (On Which Section To Turn Auto-Prune on for)
5. Enable Auto-Prune
6. Select Number Of Days
7. Select Check for Topic Number of Days


How can I manually Prune a forum?
**Manual pruning comes in handy for forums where topics are relevant even if not replied to for a while or at all such as a topic for the forum rules.
**Manual pruning allows you to prune forums when you want to, instead of them being pruned every 28 days by the Auto-Prune.
Follow these steps to Prune your forum sections manually:
1. Admin Control Panel
2. Forum Admin
3. Pruning
4. Select What Section To Prune
5. Select Number Of Days

Remember:
**Once post/topic is pruned/deleted you can not get it back!
**Stickies DO get pruned/deleted. But announcements do not.

Written By: Killerbee, edited by Noclue4aname