This might be an odd question but is there a way to automatically delete posts over 6 months old?

By default, there is no such way. But we could program a customs script for you, if needed.

I think it would be a nice add-on, sticking with the "mini" approach and why a lot of people use the forum for their lack of server resources. Does other forum software have this feature?

This might be an odd question but is there a way to automatically delete posts over 6 months old?

I think it would make more sense to delete old topics started 6 months ago, not posts. Because many times a topic lasts for more than 6 months - and deleting some posts from this topic would make such topic useless..

thats what i meant is topics and all the posts in it

Does other forum software have this feature?

I think this feature may be called "Pruning" or something like this.

IMO it would be not the best idea to clear up the forum that way, because - I am sure - amongst older and unnecessary topics you may remove useful threads as well.

The approach we're using on minibb.com, while few topics do not fit the subject of any forum and are moved to "trashcan", is the best I think. So later they all could be deleted quickly from specific forum, not by date. This would be a script that I will program in the future (but not now), and probably it will be free.

But removing the topics just by date means also you will kill the useful content for a search crawler...

The add-on you are desribing look specific for me, so... it would be a nice add-on, but I have no time to develop it under free release. If you would like to sponsor it - you're welcome, as always.

Yes, it's exactly called "Pruning." I agree, while such feature seems useful at first, I would hate to delete good/informational topics [or those that have incoming links to them] along with some useless ones. So I still prefer to delete them manually if needed and/or move/merge useless topics to one topic and delete it periodically.

On the other hand, "trascan" feature I would like :) - as it would save time doing merging/moving.

"trascan" feature

- during many years of forums administering I think this is the only one way to keep forums content qualified and "prune" them the most correct way. When a topic has been posted, you could determine immediately, does it fit to the forums subject(s) or not, and move it to the "Trashed" forum, if not. Or even think about and create the NEW forum where topics of the same subject will be stored.

When I look at other forums, which have millions of postings, I doubt all of them are useful. Moreso I think it's impossible to find something useful amongst this garbage collection, where I am sure 90% of the content does not fit the forums quality at all.

So building a "trashcan" on the way and moving all "incompatible" topics there is the only quick and qualified way of keeping the forums clean. If there would be a script which automatically cleans up this forum (or some other forum, like "archived" closed forums on minibb.com which are not accessible to anybody except administration), it would be an ideal solution.

As I wrote I will program such script sometimes when I will have more time.

The only difficult part of this script is that it needs to re-calculate the amount of topics/replies for each user who has been participated at the topic which has been removed from "trashcan". It is a giant task for the database, so I just need to find the more quickest way of how to do it, specially for LARGE forums...