I agree ... it can actually be better to rename files instead of deleting them. That way, you can once again have access to the original files if they're needed. Or not.

And/or, particularly with forum files, I pretty much always make local copies of any files I've chosen to delete from the server just in case I make a mistake that needs to be reversed.

In any case, just as Dandello instructed, rebuilding your memberlist will most likley fix the problem of the missing member.

Hmm, maybe the member has actually been deleted after all then, because I have no way of accessing his profile view. No links to it, not appearing in the member list anywhere anymore, etc. Though if I try to reregister an account under that name, it won't let me, saying it already exists. Kind of weird. Also clocked the forum start date back a bit, as it was a few years ahead of the early posters.

Thanks guys.

I'm glad that this worked for you. Congratulations!

As for the active member you mentioned who is showing up as an ex-member, with that person in particular, access their profile, then click Modify (use your admin password).

Next, click Admin Edits, and look at Date Registered: to see what date is showing. From what you posted, that person's registration will probably show up as a 2012 registraion, right? If so, change their registration date to the same date or maybe at least one day earlier than the date they first posted in your forum (evidently sometime in 2007). Remember to click Save Changes after you've changed the date, and see if that changes their status. It should.

Note: If you change the date of that person's registration, you may very well change it to the wrong date. That's because it's not uncommon for people to register, and then read for a while before they ever post, if they ever post. So if that member says anything about what their date of registration should be, you can always change the date again on their behalf.

As for all of the other members who are showing up as Ex Members, hopefully you have a good local backup of those membership files. If so, uploading those backups to the server again will probably fix that problem for all of those files. Or just as I described above, fix them one at a time as members contact you, if they contact you.

For reasons I don't really understand, sometimes files get corrupted, and then they're perfectly fine again after their respective backups have been uploaded to the server to replace the corrupted files. Go figure.

By the way, even if you do have a good local backup of your membership files, before you upload any of them to the server, it'll be a good idea to first download any such files onto your computer as a 2nd local backup just in case any of those files are needed.

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Not to confuse your situation, but I've also known this kind of thing to happen when the Forum Start Date has somehow gotten changed to a later date than it should be. You might want to check that in Admin Center > Forum Settings to see what's listed.

Good luck!

mw1197 wrote on Mar 23^rd, 2013 at 11:29pm:

Exactly!

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mw1197 wrote on Mar 23^rd, 2013 at 11:29pm:

Yes, you can do this, and you'll of course want to adjust this number to best fit your needs.

Go to Admin Center > Forum Settings > and scroll down to "Maximum Topics to display in the Message Index" - that's probably set at 20. For your purposes, I might change that to 500, and if that works, then maybe change that much higher.

Additionally, you may want to look at the following:

Go to Admin Center > Forum Settings > and scroll down to "Maximum number of messages to display on one page of a Topic" - that's probably set at 15. Change that to whatever you want.

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mw1197 wrote on Mar 23^rd, 2013 at 11:29pm:

You can follow the same instructions above, but after you've selected all of the posts, just uncheck the stickied threads, and that should do it.

By the way, if you end up inadvertently moving any posts or threads you didn't mean to move, you can simply go to those posts or threads in the newly created board for that purpose, and move back what you want.

Nice thing to remember: This method of cleaning up the spam posts simply moves posts around versus deleting them. This way, you kind of can't make any mistakes. Or more accurately, any mistakes that are made can be reversed however you want.

However you manage it all, you might want to stick a notice at the top of your forum so that everyone will know what's going on, and for them to bear with you during your spam abatement process.

Dandello wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2013 at 1:28am:


Thanks. I tried this, but got an error message when rebuilding saying that it was missing a txt file (presumably one of the spam messages I deleted). Maybe it's to do with 2.1.

At least regarding the deletion of spammers ...

Elrick. wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2013 at 3:53pm:

That's a good example of how to delete a lot of members, but it's a bad example of what mw1197 actually wants to do.

mw1197 wrote on Mar 21^st, 2013 at 10:07pm:

Happily enough, even though YaBB doesn't have a database per se, it can nonetheless query its membership data quite effectively as Jon instructed.

Important: Before deleting that many members, make sure you have a good backup of all the members in your forum; just in case the backup is needed.

To do exactly what mw1197 wants to do, specifically to delete a lot of members at the same time, the following instructions should work:

Go to Admin Center > View/Delete Members ~ bottom of the page.

Set "Greater Than" ~ "120" ~ "Days Registered" ~ click the checkbox to the right.

Note: Obviously, you'll want to set the "Days Registered" to however many days that fits your criteria.

Hint: With thousands of different spam-bots that have registered, you may want to temporarily adjust the "Number of Members displayed per page in Member List" to 500 or 1,000 or whatever number that works best for you. That way, there will be less pages to cycle through as you perform this task.

Food for thought: You may want to consider clicking the box to the right of "Send Email to deleted members:" before deleting members. That way, if you inadvertenly delete members in good standing, you can make them whole again by uploading a backup of their files onto the server.

If you choose to have the forum send deleted members automated emails, you may want to edit the file for that process so that it better explains why their membership has been deleted (for any members who are otherwise in good standing). This can be easily done through your Admin Center.

If I was doing this in our forum, I don't think I'd have automated emails going to the members I've deleted. I might instead put up a notice in the forum about it, and keep a local copy of all the members I've deleted just in case any of those files were needed.

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As for the deletion of those approximately 24,000 spam posts made by all of those spam-bots, I think I may have a workable solution for that as well.

After I clear my head about it a bit, and do some experiments, I'll let you know here in this topic.

We've had some people with issues like this. I'm not familiar with 2.1 but, once the spam in removed, on newer versions of YaBB you can go to the Admin Center and under Maintenance Controls, running Rebuild Message Index and Recount Board Totals usually does the trick of removing references to the deleted thread files.