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I think everyone who runs a large forum with tons of posts runs into that problem sooner or later: when do I start deleting old stuff to give the server more breathing space?

It's not uncommon to have a posts table that takes up 500 megs, making it by FAR the largest table in the entire database.

Maybe Rick and all of us here can come up with a good way to maintain a large board without having to keep all the old posts in the main database, but also without erasing them completely (I recall that Classic allowed a user to export/archive topics that could be imported back at a later date).

What if instead of pruning topics (which you would still be able to do) you could "archive" topics into another database table (w3t_ArchivePosts.sql)?

These topics would then not burden the main posts table (making the forums run faster) and would only be available via the search function.

Any other ideas on how to tackle this issue?

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Pooh-Bah
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I love the idea of a separate Archive... especially if they could be displayed on the main forum for browsing (as well as searching, which I assume would be a separate search function)



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Pooh-Bah
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Good idea. Move archives into a separate database table that can grow real large as it's rarely used.


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More recent versions of MySQL have an "Archive" table type that would be perfect here (although older versions don't have it, so it'd be a compatability issue).


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Well Dave, dividing a 500+ meg posts.sql table into two sure sounds better than leaving everything in a single table. Surely you can come up with a more constructive answer than that, perhaps even offer your professional view on what would work best here.


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Dave, Gizmo,

How about a different database table for each forum as opposed to one for all posts?

When a board grows, it's the posts table that surpasses the rest in terms of size.

Or what about allowing the admin to create new forums with a tickbox to use a different table for it?

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Pooh-Bah
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Originally Posted by Conrad
Well Dave, dividing a 500+ meg posts.sql table into two sure sounds better than leaving everything in a single table. Surely you can come up with a more constructive answer than that, perhaps even offer your professional view on what would work best here.

? I'm agreeing that a separate archive table is a good idea. It would get rarely used, wouldn't get stuck in memory, wouldn't get scanned often, would be a good idea.

I don't understand why you responded as you did when I'm agreeing with you, Conrad.


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I think he thought you were being sarcastic.

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My sincere apologies, Dave.

As Jamin mentioned I wrongly read it as sarcasm.

Just trying to push forth an idea for large-scale UBBT boards as it doesn't seem feasible to leave everything in a single table. Sooner or later with a popular board it will grow to 300mb, 500mb, 700mb, 1GB+. And at some point parts of the forums (probably the oldest threads) are either going to have to be deleted or moved.

There is also another idea: instead of moving threads manually there could be a single CP admin option to decide when certain threads would automatically end up in the archive. This would be global and would apply to all threads. Say if the admin sets this to 2 years - then all posts which haven't had a reply within those 2 years would automatically be moved to the archive.

- people could either search the main site, or if they are looking for something which they think might be older than 2 yrs then they have the option to search the archive. Maybe the search engine can even encompass both altogether in a single search query.

- if things ever get slow or out of hand, a single click could turn the archive off for the time being, until everything is moved to a new server/more memory is installed/etc.

Either way, archived posts would only be available via a special search function so they would not burden the main board by being part of the main database that 99% of users access.

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I always read Dave as being sarcasm, don't know him too well wink...

I do enjoy the idea of the archive though...


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Pooh-Bah
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I'm totally in agreement with the idea of an archive table. If done right the end user has no idea the messages are in a second table, are treated differently programatically, not should they.

Look, in a forum that has 276 pages of posts the average user will look at the first 10, occasionally the last 5, but almost never will they look at pages 15 through 270. So, why keep those in the primary posts table?


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Indeed laugh Looking forward to an archive smile

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Pooh-Bah
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Well, the point of it is, that if you do it right then, to the end user, it should not appear as an archive at all.


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agreed


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