NineChime forum

I might have to take a look at the updater again.  Wacintaki and Wax now use identical databases, but there might still be a quirk or two when trying to update from an old version of Wax.

Deleting old mailbox messages is easy.  You just pick how old a message has to be (in days), and anything older will be wiped out.  There can also be exceptions for messages, such as those that have been sent by you (as in, announcements).  I wouldn't worry too much about deleting mailbox messages for people who log in frequently.  They don't really take up much space.

My recommendations:
- Keep member accounts that have archived pictures.
- Delete member accounts that haven't been logged into for 4-6 months.
- Delete member accounts where someone registered, logged in, and never came back (1 month should cover it).
- Delete mailbox messages older than 6-12 months.

For years now I've also thought it was a good idea to have an [A] (or anything like that) next to an admin's username

Oh, duh... I should have thought of that.  Well, that would take some trickery.  The easy thing to do is make a cached list of admins and compare the poster's name to the array of admins.  This could be done with a custom clip of code in "boot.php" and a test function.  That's not too much work.  The trick is to make it obvious without being visually intrusive.

And one more thing that at caught my mind was when people add links to their posts they tend to be ridiculously long.

Yeah... I should do what Slashdot does, which is to truncate the link title to just the server.  So a link to "http://www.server.com/page/dir/more/other/file.jpg" turns into file.jpg [server.com] or if it is a path and not a file, then it would be [link: server.com]

Hmm... I'm surprised that worked.  Was this a fresh install or an update from a previous version of Wacintaki or Wax?

Anyway, how complicated it is to write a script depends on what kind of information you want to clear out.  Getting rid of old accounts and comments, resetting user flags, deleting pictures and animations that are too big, clearing pictures with too little "time spent", or resetting picture counts is very easy (as in, "a couple minutes" easy).  Doing some selective housekeeping, such as scanning for comments with specific phrases, or getting rid of spam takes more work.  Anything regarding thumbnails can be a pain.

Just ask, and I'll let you know what needs to be done.  Most things are really easy to hack together, especially if they are specific to one site.  Making them easy to use, secure, and failsafe for general use throughout the Internet on multiple server types... that's a bit trickier. 

Hmm... this problem happens on the S-R Advanced board, but not Sutaro Sketcher.  I have a suspicion that the "origart" database field is not working properly, and might need to be checked.  Use this little hack to see if that field is working right:  testart.php.  It will test the field, first, and if it doesn't seem to be working right, will give you the option to fix it.  Note any errors it prints and get back to me.

By the way, I noticed a couple things:

I fixed a small problem with Firefox concerning the applet resize mod I gave you.  It's now official, so you can remove the JavaScript code and simply use this new Poteto.js file instead (obviously, keep the resize buttons in the HTML).  Note that this new Poteto.js file contains the new resize code, but not the timer.

I also saw a mailbox notice about you wanting to delete a lot of content on your board to clear out dead accounts and stuff.  If you like, I can write a simple script to clear out certain kinds of old content, on top of people who haven't logged in recently (as is what happens with the autokill feature).