ok.. so now, I'm looking for an easy way to remove the original logout menu.  I see elgg_unregister_menu_item and tried:

elgg_unregister_menu_item('topbar', 'account/logout');

but that didn't work.. Guessing I need to somehow get the parent item and then somehow call out the child 'logout' item in order to remove it?

Also, I tried to add an image to my topbar menu that will link to another page.  I have factChain-Pen-badg3.png located in my /var/www/html/mod/fc-plugin/graphic/factChain-Pen-badge3.png and have the following code in start.php:

$text = elgg_view('output/img', array(

'src' => elgg_get_site_url(). 'mod/fc_plugin/graphic/factChain-Pen-badge3.png',

'alt' => '', 'class' => '',

'title' => '',

'width' => '',

'height' => '',

));

elgg_register_menu_item('topbar', array(

'name' => 'factChainPen',

'href' => 'https://mytesturlFC.com',

'text' => $text,

'priority' => 1000,

'section' => 'alt',

));

doesn't appear at all :-(

Thanks for the help, yes learn,try,search is the best approach, some of these items have required a quick turnaround so sometimes the research time makes it difficult to hit some deadlines.. It doesn't feel good asking for solutions without being thorough first so I know where you're coming from.  So thanks for all the help you've provided thus far. This is my first project with elgg and php so it has definitely been a learning experience.

Tank you but the problem is that the monthly cron is not triggered

I checked with my host. It is a shared plan, which does not support archive.

 It only supports the following DB engines. 

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1458122/enabling-archive-engine

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26996618/install-mariadb-archive-engine

Or use the suggested plugin, and delete the system log archives tables manually from your DB.

Don't forget about this.