Auto Lock old threads in Classifieds Section?

Any chance we could implement an Auto Lock feature (which I am 95% sure comes standard with VB) for the Classifieds Section of the forums?

In the last 3 days I think 10 or more threads from 2002-2004 have been bumped asking questions about animals that are almost certainly no longer available.

If a thread becomes inactive for 60 Days or something, the forum would automatically lock it.

On the off chance someone actually was still selling something from a thread that became locked, then there is always PM's as well to contact the seller.

Anyway, this is JMO. I think it might help, but only in the classified areas. In other areas, having the ability to search and reply to already started threads is nice.

Billy

As far as I know, there is no feature like that in vBulletin. Or if there is, I have just never stumbled on it, and I believe I have looked at all of the admin functions quite a few times. So if you know of something like this and where it is hidden, please let me know.

Further, if there IS such a function as this, it will most likely be global and certainly not one that can be selectively applied to particular forums. vBulletin is big in using templates and the forum structure and display are all driven by templates that apply to ALL the forums. I had to put some code in to specifically sort the Good Guy Certification forum by certification code, and it was based on an IF statement saying "If forum ID = xx". So yes you can control each forum separately, but it is a pain in the butt to do.

As far as I know, the only way those old classifieds could be locked is if someone (as in ME) went and manually locked each and every one of them. Since there are quite a few of them, I sincerely doubt it is going to happen.

Yes, I could delete them, but since I have discovered that even the old ads still bring people to this site via the search engines, I'm not sure that is such a smart thing to do. They are doing a fair job of passive advertising for the site, and more then likely those visitors also take the time to look at the more recent ads while they are here.

Actually what would work better is a thing called "RESPONSIBILITY" If you have an ad up and it sells "DELETE IT" its a push of 1 button and reading skills, Billy I know how you feel, Ive come across some real good ads and find out its from 2 years ago

Originally Posted by WebSlave

As far as I know, there is no feature like that in vBulletin. Or if there is, I have just never stumbled on it, and I believe I have looked at all of the admin functions quite a few times. So if you know of something like this and where it is hidden, please let me know.

Further, if there IS such a function as this, it will most likely be global and certainly not one that can be selectively applied to particular forums. vBulletin is big in using templates and the forum structure and display are all driven by templates that apply to ALL the forums. I had to put some code in to specifically sort the Good Guy Certification forum by certification code, and it was based on an IF statement saying "If forum ID = xx". So yes you can control each forum separately, but it is a pain in the butt to do.

As far as I know, the only way those old classifieds could be locked is if someone (as in ME) went and manually locked each and every one of them. Since there are quite a few of them, I sincerely doubt it is going to happen.

Yes, I could delete them, but since I have discovered that even the old ads still bring people to this site via the search engines, I'm not sure that is such a smart thing to do. They are doing a fair job of passive advertising for the site, and more then likely those visitors also take the time to look at the more recent ads while they are here.

Hey Rich. I was fairly certain this feature was built in. I know another forum that uses it, threads are locked after 30 Days of inactivity. In the Classifieds section, he has it set different so that they are locked right after the first post, so no replies can be posted.

I have a feeling he may have tweaked the system to allow assinging different rules to different forums though.

I'll try PM'ing him to see what he says. I'll also play around with my version of VB to see if I can find anything.

This has been a problem in the past, and has always annoyed me. I guess it's just a pet peeve. One person responds to an ad that's two years old and inevitably two or three more add responses before someone finally points out the age of the ad.
My thinking is, sure it's a passive form of advertising, but what do the people wind up thinking in the end? Those classifieds are ancient, why bother searching them? That's how it would strike me. It would just irritate me if I was using a search engine to look for a snake for sale and the hits turned out to be a bunch of animals that were for sale two or three years ago.
It really just looks like clutter. Forum posts have a definate purpose and in most cases age has no effect on them. When something is for sale though, there comes a time where it just should be eliminated.

I always try to delete old ads when I am finished with them, but apparently I am in the vast minority there.
This is just my 2 cents, but I would at least like to see a compromise. Any ads over six months old, or even a year at the very most should be eliminated. Surely the ads for the last year if not six months would fill the purpose of the advertising you want to get out of them, and having ads that are two years old and even older just looks foolish really.
I know I've mentioned it once before and it was thought the feature didn't exist in VB but phpbb boards have an auto prune feature with a selectable time period that posts with no replies in that set time are automatically deleted.

I talked to the Admin over at the other site I mentioned, he customized VB to do the auto locking automatically. He said it was just a few lines of code. Ill try to see if he will give them to me.

Also, to just specify this code in a particular section, you would just need to use an if statement to only activate it within the section ID of the "Classified" forums (Although, my experiance with VB is limited I do know it is heavily based upon the database and not on static files, so it could possibly be a bit more difficult then this example portrays ).

Ex:

<?php
<?php
if ( $f == "841" )
{
// Code to execute Auto Lock feature goes here
}
else
{
// Specify another function to affect all forums, or leave blank and
// continue standard VB code after the closing }
}
?>

(Sorry, but the forum would not let me wrap this code in the HTML or CODE tags, and you dont seem to have PHP Tags installed/enabled).