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Clearing database of inactive accounts

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(@tmelange)
Posts: 74
Trusted Member
Topic starter
 

Hi there,

Does anyone have any tips or tricks to clean up a membership database? I'd really like to find a way to delete accounts that have been inactive for a year AND where the member is not an author, does not have any favorites and has not posted any reviews. basically I want to cull the blank accounts.

Anyone ever done this?

Thanks in advance!


 
Posted : 02/09/2010 10:42 pm
 kali
(@kali)
Posts: 307
Reputable Member
 

If I remember correctly, eFiction doesn't store last visit/log in info without a modification, so it's very difficult to really know who has or has not been active. Furthermore, we found many users were actively reading, just not reviewing or marking favorites.

What we did was send a mass e-mail telling users to log into their accounts and either start becoming more active on the site by leaving reviews or tracking stories or filling in their profiles. We then deleted all accounts with no profile, and no reviews or favorites.

A more intelligent way to do it might be to make a temporary profile checkbox. E-mail your users and tell them they you will be deleting all accounts where it is not ticked on X date.


Skins made by Kali are no longer supported!

 
Posted : 03/09/2010 12:21 am
(@tmelange)
Posts: 74
Trusted Member
Topic starter
 

If I remember correctly, eFiction doesn't store last visit/log in info without a modification, so it's very difficult to really know who has or has not been active. Furthermore, we found many users were actively reading, just not reviewing or marking favorites.

What we did was send a mass e-mail telling users to log into their accounts and either start becoming more active on the site by leaving reviews or tracking stories or filling in their profiles. We then deleted all accounts with no profile, and no reviews or favorites.

A more intelligent way to do it might be to make a temporary profile checkbox. E-mail your users and tell them they you will be deleting all accounts where it is not ticked on X date.

How exactly did you identify the accounts with no profile, and no reviews or favorites and how did you do the batch delete?


 
Posted : 03/09/2010 1:20 am
 kali
(@kali)
Posts: 307
Reputable Member
 

Manually. We have a lot of staff.

The reviews and favorites tables do list the UID though, so you could easily search through them.


Skins made by Kali are no longer supported!

 
Posted : 03/09/2010 10:32 am
 Elle
(@jenny)
Posts: 594
Honorable Member
 

I would definitely recommend installing the last visit mod ASAP. When it comes to purging accounts, you might want to toggle the last visit mod to update every time the person's info is called (i.e. every visit) instead of at every login.

I created a script for Lyndsie which outputted a list of no reviews/favourites/stories/empty profiles etc though I'm not sure where that script is right now; it'd be quite simple to do but quite intensive if you have a lot of members.


archive: dramione.org
site: accio.nu

Available for skin/mod commission! 🙂

 
Posted : 03/09/2010 12:36 pm
(@tmelange)
Posts: 74
Trusted Member
Topic starter
 

Manually. We have a lot of staff.

The reviews and favorites tables do list the UID though, so you could easily search through them.

Aha. Thank you. I had started to do a manual cull and can continue along this vein...


 
Posted : 03/09/2010 1:04 pm
(@tmelange)
Posts: 74
Trusted Member
Topic starter
 

I would definitely recommend installing the last visit mod ASAP. When it comes to purging accounts, you might want to toggle the last visit mod to update every time the person's info is called (i.e. every visit) instead of at every login.

I created a script for Lyndsie which outputted a list of no reviews/favourites/stories/empty profiles etc though I'm not sure where that script is right now; it'd be quite simple to do but quite intensive if you have a lot of members.

Thanks so much. I will look into the last visit mod. If you locate that script, please let me know.


 
Posted : 03/09/2010 1:06 pm
(@lyndsie)
Posts: 1263
Member Moderator
 

A criterion I used had to do with the fact that my site had been around since v1. Each successive version we made new skins, but unless users logged in and edited their profiles, they still had an old skin name set as their preferred skin. So I told everyone to log in and edit their profiles, and those who still had old skins selected were eligible for deletion. I have deleted 5000+ members from my site.


 
Posted : 03/09/2010 4:49 pm
(@tmelange)
Posts: 74
Trusted Member
Topic starter
 

A criterion I used had to do with the fact that my site had been around since v1. Each successive version we made new skins, but unless users logged in and edited their profiles, they still had an old skin name set as their preferred skin. So I told everyone to log in and edit their profiles, and those who still had old skins selected were eligible for deletion. I have deleted 5000+ members from my site.

But did you have to go into the mysql database to make the deletions or did you do them manually, one by one through the archive interface?


 
Posted : 03/09/2010 5:29 pm
(@lyndsie)
Posts: 1263
Member Moderator
 

I used a combination. I would never delete members through the database directly; because there are so many tables involved it's much better to delete through the web interface.


 
Posted : 04/09/2010 4:30 pm
(@tmelange)
Posts: 74
Trusted Member
Topic starter
 

I used a combination. I would never delete members through the database directly; because there are so many tables involved it's much better to delete through the web interface.

Okay, I guess there's no easy way, then. Thank you!


 
Posted : 04/09/2010 6:06 pm
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