By pluginamp on

Hi everyone,

a very strange thing just happened earlier today. I deleted one of my site's users, but none of their posts were removed - at least, they're still listed on the site's front page - but I'm not allowed to access them! Does anyone know what's going on?

Thanks!
Terri

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.6.x

Comments

Squidgy’s picture

Squidgy commented

Content isn't deleted when the user is removed - it's ownership moves to the anonymous account, I believe. You could write a very simple module to change Drupal's behaviour so it does that, though - if you need help with that, try asking the support line at irc.freenode.net, channel #drupal-support. Someone's always around to help. =)

pluginamp’s picture

pluginamp commented

Hi Squidgy,

well, this is what it says on the screen when I click "delete:" "Deleting a user will remove all their submissions as well. This action cannot be undone." When I've deleted users in the past, their submissions have also been removed, so this is a little weird that they're not now!

Terri

Squidgy’s picture

Squidgy commented

Really? Interesting, what version of Drupal are you using?

I just checked my 4.7.2, and I see "All submissions made by this user will be attributed to the anonymous account. This action cannot be undone." Maybe it changes if anonymous access is disabled.

vm’s picture

vm commented

the problem with deleting user content.

its not only that user who suffers. if the deleted user created 100 pieces of content, then all the user comments ttached to the deletd users content and such would also have to be deleted or they would be orphaned.

you can selectively delete a users comments. as superadmin, then if necessary change the author upon editing.

pluginamp’s picture

pluginamp commented

No, this user really needed to be deleted. He was turning out to be hostile and strange.

Anyways, I'm using Drupal 4.6- I want to upgrade, but don't feel secure enough in my skills to do that yet, and don't have money to pay anyone to help me. And what it says in 4.6 is that all of the user's submissions will be deleted, and in fact they are. Except not this time. It's very weird.

Squidgy’s picture

Squidgy commented

Actually, just to clarify, are his nodes deleted, or is it just his comments that yet lurk? Even if his content is still around, you can kill it directly from the database - first, make backups. Make LOTS of backups.

I don't remember the 4.6 database structure, but it should be a pretty simple matter to kill any nodes where uid (user id) is equal to whatever his number used to be. Having access to phpMyAdmin would be a huge help to you with that. Again, MAKE BACKUPS.

...backups? =D