forum archiving

[eFestivals]

Pleasingly, the forum software that is used here now has an archiving function, which I'm just starting to put to use.

This means that older topics can be seemlessly moved out of the 'live' database tables that new posts go into, to separate database tables, so that the 'live' tables don't get too big in size, so that the forums continue to work at a decent speed when things get busy.

The only effect that users here will see as a result of archiving is that the archived topics will show as locked - meaning that the topic cannot have new posts made to it. The topics themselves will still be available to be read or searched for, and in the same forum as they originally existed within.

Currently I'm not sure what cut-off date I'll be setting for archiving, but at a guess it's likely to be at around 2 years.

This archiving feature is a great addition to this forums software, as previously it's been necessary to delete older posts to keep the forums operating smoothly.